A Curious Statistical Anomaly

For some reason this has been a bad week for me — migraines, bad fibro days, and let us not forget the poison ivy. Luckily, the poison ivy (cross every set of fingers within ten miles) looks like it’s not going to go systemic on me this time. My right arm has pretty much cleared up. The left is taking longer for some reason but it’s not weeping and not spreading, so that’s a win.

We’re coming up on the publishing date for SFRevu and Gumshoe Review and things are a bit hectic. Most of the content is in as far as the book reviews go. I’ve got the interview for Gumshoe Review in and formatted and just need to write an introduction (I’m doing that interview). For SFRevu one of our regular contributors is doing the interview and I’m on pins and needles waiting for it.

For the next few days, I have to write up my reviews. Every month I say next month I’ll read the book and write the review in that order before reading a second book. But, somehow each month I find myself with a pile of read books filled with notes, sticky notes, highlighted passages, and no reviews in evidence. Then it comes down to lots and lots of coffee and writing, writing, writing (interspersed with coffee, coffee, coffee). It usually comes out okay in the end but it makes for some tense time just at the end of the month when the crunch comes.

Of course, having the unexpected come up during the same time period — we’ve been having a lot of severe storm warnings and have lost power for seconds and minutes at a time (no long outages thankfully). However, the worse unexpected occurrence is increased migraines with stormy weather. (I know it’s not just me because my husband gave me a reality check — our friends with migraines have also been afflicted.)

The creativity of the title is that, I’ve been jotting down notes and sentences for a short story idea I have. Just when I think I’m all focused on a project or reading or something — I’m shiny thinged. For those of you who don’t know, it often happens that people with migraines and fibro have trouble focusing and staying focused. Once I’m interrupted by something, I find myself shooting off in some other direction and working on things other than what I planned. If you’ve every read that joke going around on the internet about going to the store — first they have to find the car keys, then they see the bills need to be paid, then they go to find the checkbook, but notice the floor needs to be swept…and on and on. That’s being shiny thinged.

I just feel like of all the billion of things I want to do in a day, there just isn’t the time to do them all and I have a terrible time trying to focus on the list, choosing the things that can be done in the time period because I want to do them all. Or most of them. Or at least some of them. Today was a really bad day. It took almost all my spoons to get dressed, treat the poison ivy, get downstairs, pick up the dining room table, start the laptop, download mail, get breakfast, and read email, answer same, and start proofing and formatting reviews. Now it’s evening and I’m all caught up on everyone’s stuff but my own. So, I guess with 3 days left to go that’s a good thing — but it still feels like there so much left to do. And did I mention I have a sweater almost done that I need to write the pattern up for? Never enough time.

Last weekend, we worked on getting that rest of the gardening done.  Sunday, we got a lot done and then started to weed out around the fruit orchard.  Last year we didn’t do much in that area and it has gotten rather overgrown with weeds and baby trees and stuff.

I’m highly allergic to poison ivy.  In Maine and most of New England, I know exactly what it looks like and avoid it like the plague of destruction it is.  Last year, I ended up with poison ivy (going systemic) twice.  I got some gardening gloves from FoxGloves.  I got a pair of the ones that go up to the elbow.  I also have some regular gardening gloves — you know the generic kind that just go about 3 inches above your wrist. I also have a pair of leather ones that  go nearly to the elbow.  Last Sunday, I was wearing my regular gloves and a long sleeve shirt made out of a gauzy material to let air in and keep bugs off type of material.

Monday, I noticed bubbly dots on my arm.  My right arm.  The arm with no lymph nodes due to breast cancer surgery 6 years ago.   Rather than waiting until I was really, really sure it was poison ivy — I played it smart and called my allergist.  I got in today.  Yup, poison ivy.  As of today, it’s a half dozen spots on my arm and one on my stomach.  We’re hoping to get it in check without going for the big guns.  So, now I’ve got an extra antihistamine and a steroid cream. Tonight I have a few more spots.  If it doesn’t clear up by Thursday, I call about the big guns.

Now, you’d think after last years P.I. woes, I’d learn to recognize this sucker.  But here in Maryland, I’m not seeing the poison ivy I know and detest from New England.  No shiny three leaved thingies.  In the area I weeded, I saw 5 leaved vines, three leaved vines and stand alone bushes (none shiny and all with big honking leaves and serrated edges), and a variety of vines with and without thorns.  There were even some run away raspberry vines.  But nothing that I recognized as poison ivy.  How can I avoid what I can’t identify.  Guess it’s time to buy a field guide to poison ivy. This is so frustrating.  And so is the fact that it went through my shirt.

So, next trip to the weed patch, it’s the elbow length gloves under the leather gloves  with a cotton long sleeve shirt.  I may melt but hopefully I won’t get poison ivy again.  Of course the weeding may need to wait until I get the present case of blistery bumps under control.

Just in case you’re interested, Burt’s Bees Poison Ivy Soap and Domeboro are great for starters to control it and for those who aren’t hyper-sensitive (like my hubby)[ [Hyperion: I can only apologize so much for being damn near perfect 🙂 ]. But always check with your doctor for actual treatment — poison ivy, with the way it spreads, is not something to mess with.  If you use over-the-counter stuff and it doesn’t clear up in 48 hours call a doctor, you may also be hyper-sensitive.

Now if I can only figure out what it looks like down here in Maryland with the heat and moisture.  I’ve checked out several websites with pictures and just about everything thing in the woods matches one picture or another even some I know aren’t poison ivy.  Why can’t Mother Nature put little labels on the plants for us? It’s the least she could do.

I remember that I first saw George Carlin on The Mike Douglas Show. I loved his strange views of what should be totally mundane. Later, I learned he was a stand up comedian and had stood up against censorship with 7 little words you can’t say on TV.

Today, I opened CNN.com and saw that he’d died of heart problems. How could anyone with a heart that big die? His humor, though often ribald and on the edge, was never cruel. It often raised more questions after the laughter died away. He was a social commentator. Most comedians, at least to my mind the ones that have lasting power, are not just telling jokes but making observations on society and humanity. Carlin saw the absurd in our society and brought it out into the light so we could all take a look at it. He fought constantly against censorship and held a mirror up to us so we could see ourselves from the outside. He looked at relationships, cats, broadcasting, trends, fashion, just about everything — with a sharp wit, light mockery, and humor.

The world will go on. Silliness will be prevalent in society. He will be missed and I, for one, will miss his humorous take on daily life here on planet Earth.

Remember physics class in high school where they give you the box and you’re supposed to shine a light through some holes and see light as waves but it passes through the holes as particles? This photo brought it all back. Isn’t it great?

The photo is from an article in New ScientistTech. Among other things:

Researchers have found a way to generate the shortest-ever flash of light – 80 attoseconds (billionths of a billionth of a second) long.

Such flashes have already been used to capture an image of a laser pulse too short to be “photographed” before. (The photo with this post.)

Remember me, science geek? I just thought the photo was “cool” — yeah, I’m dating myself but so what. Imagine taking a photo of light. That long ago science class project just seems even more real to me now.

With this technology, they believe they may be able to photograph electrons going around a atom.  Well, it beats trying to shrink a man/woman to go take a look for them and sending back sketches that have to be enlarged.  Oh, don’t tell me you didn’t watch The Incredible Shrinking Man and think at the end “I wonder what he’ll see when he gets really small?” I can’t be the only one who wondered what happened next.

Now, I wonder what will these scientists do next?

Just saw The Incredible Hulk this afternoon.  I really enjoyed it.  It seems that the super hero movies are really getting much, much better since Marvel decided to maintain control over the process.  This is the Hulk — tortured by what he’s become, afraid to be around people, desperate to control the beast within, determined to rid himself of the beast, and hounded by a military that wants to control him/use him/replicate him.

If you’re a Hulk fan, this is the film to see.  Previous movies have skipped over the many of the factors that have made the Hulk so popular.  They’ve left out the pathos of being a person who can not control himself in certain situations.  Banner, after the laboratory experiment that turned him into the Hulk, has been trying to find a cure.  He’s built his life around finding a cure, keeping a low profiles and out of the sight of the government, and has been working on recognizing triggers that cause him to transform and controlling his emotions.  He’s not just the cardboard cutout character that so many other films have made him out to be.  There is depth and emotional underpinnings to this man.  His life has been turned upside down and he can not longer afford to be who he was–a scientist with a life that included friends, a girlfriend, social interactions, and a future.

This is not the basic origin story movie.  By the end of the credits the origin is over and we’re on to the story.  Bruce Banner has managed to keep his beast leashed for 158 days.  He’s learning techniques to control his emotional state and has a pulse reader that helps him keep track of his excitement or anxiety level.  He’s corresponding with someone over the internet and working on a cure or serum to help him control the transformation into the Hulk. However, the US government hasn’t given up looking for him and they manage to find him.   We’re off and running as he tries to escape, get the data he needs to help in finding a cure, and find another hiding place.

There’s lots of special effects. After all, who doesn’t love explosions, fights, and exciting battles on the big screen. All in all, the special effects while spectacular don’t drive the plot.  The people drive the plot and cue the audience into the players in this drama.  We learn from observation and interaction about the character and integrity of the other players in this story.

And for Hulk fans there’s a number of Easter Egg type moments.  Many of the armaments are by Stark Industries. Lou Ferrigno has a minor part as a guard and is also the voice of the Hulk. Ferrigno was the original Hulk in the TV series.  And so on and so on, I’m sure I missed a lot of other references.  There were a couple that I was told about by some of the people we went to see the film with but I don’t remember them now — if you know of others let me know. [Hyperion: They played the theme music from the TV show during one portion.  There are a couple of others, but to say them would be to spoil the moment in the movie.]

All in all, a good movie I’m glad I took the time to see on the big screen.  But as usual, I think $8 for a matinée is a bit steep.  I’d be much happier renting the DVD and viewing it at home for a lower cost.  However, the big screen and the theater experience does have a certain atmosphere that is nice to be part of occasionally.

I ran across this Wired article that mentioned an article in the March issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry that internet addiction be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  Really, people get a grip.

This is the kind of stuff that causes non-psychologists/psychiatrists to believe that all mental disorders are bunk.  Addiction is a real problem and some people, especially those with addictive personalities can become addiction to just about anything: drugs, alcohol, gambling, people. In other words,  just because some people get addicted to the internet, it doesn’t mean that the internet causes the addiction. There is nothing inherent in using the internet that causes people to become addicted to it.  When someone exhibits addictive behavior it is far better to first look at what else is going on in that person’s life.

Many of us in the computer field/industry use computers daily and nearly continuously for hours.  Are we addicted? No, we’re working.  On the other hand, a lonely person who’s bullied at home, school, or work may turn to the internet for the interactions and support that they are missing in their daily lives.  A relative of mine spent hours on the internet, everyone claimed she was addicted to it.  But in point of fact, she was miserable in her life and was not getting any support at home or from her family.  Addicted? It seemed that way but once she got divorced and remarried to someone she met over the internet the constant hours on line ended because she didn’t need the escape the internet was providing.

There is a fine line between addiction and use as a relief valve or escape from an unpleasant situation.  Labeling internet use over a certain number of hours, checking of email, desire to upgrade equipment, and so on as indicators of addiction seem to always come from people who don’t work on computers or write code for a living.

Before deciding to label something an addiction, it would be better to actually study the use patterns across groups controlling for profession, life style, and other factors — this wouldn’t be brought up to the association.  Perhaps if doctors learned to use computers as a tool to communicate information and assistance to their patients, they too might begin to check their email and consider upgrading their equipment and software.

There needs to be a lot more research and serious study of the issue before even contemplating adding another item to the book.

Today I was reading Amazon Daily and found a link to an article by Luc Sante, “The Book Collection That Devoured My Life” in the Wall Street Journal. I read through the article and I laughed and I commiserated and I thought, “Here is a kindred spirit.” Here’s two quotes that give a flavor of what I mean:

There’s nothing inert about these shelves, no men’s-club-library or college-chapel somnolence here — it’s a hive of activity, abuzz with rhythms and images and ideas. As for time: I shelve literature chronologically. It’s the way I think, a landscape of hills and ridges and switchbacks marked off by dates, like a cartoon by Saul Steinberg, here rendered almost literal, so that I can see as well as feel the 19th century turning into the 20th, the prewar cascading into the postwar, the spines gradually becoming brighter as the present day approaches.

Over the years I’ve gotten used to the inevitable questions about my accumulation of books. No, I haven’t read all of them, nor do I intend to — in some cases that’s not the point. No, I’m not a lawyer (a question usually asked by couriers, back in the days of couriers). I do have a few hundred books that I reread or consult fairly regularly, and I have a lot of books pertaining to whatever current or future projects I have on the fire, and I have many, many books speculatively pointing toward some project that is still barely a gleam in my eye. I have a lot of books that I need for reference, especially now that I live 40 minutes away from the nearest really solid library. I have some books that exist in the same capacity as the more recondite tools in the chest of a good carpenter — you may not need it more than once in 20 years, but it’s awfully nice to have it there when you do. Primarily, though, books function as a kind of external hard drive for my mind — my brain isn’t big enough to do all the things it wants or needs to do without help.

That’s pretty much our library here in the woods. The closest library is simply a pick up for books requested and the next nearest is 40 or 50 minutes away (sometimes longer depending on traffic). We used to use the library a lot wherever we lived. But even then we bought a lot of books. Even working with SFRevu, Gumshoe Review, and TechRevu, I still buy a lot of books. The three zines don’t cover some of the subjects that I’m extremely interested in: knitting, spinning, fiber related material, textile history, pattern collections, Jane Austen follow-ons, historical romances, psychology (scientific and layperson), and many other things that set my mind on a quest for knowledge or entertainment.

When my husband and I first moved in together, we jokingly told friends that we could never break up because we’d consolidated our libraries. When we married, we said the same thing. People seemed to accept that it was serious because of the books; but then they were also book people.

When we moved to Maryland the first time, a pizza delivery guy looked at the bookshelves spread along every wall and even creating one wall in our tiny apartment and commented that he hadn’t realized this apartment complex had a library. At that time we only had about 3-4,000 books. Every move, we’ve paired down the other household items and with great reluctance gave away unwanted books. Yet, every time we had more and more book boxes to move.

A couple of years ago, we entered all our books into a cataloging program and found quite a few duplicates and books we forgot we’d bought. At that time we had close to 7,000 books in our library. Now that the zines shipping address is my home and we need to store the books for review here before mailing out to the reviewers, we needed more space.

Paul and I have spent some time each month going through our collection and culling those that we think we can do without. Usually, a couple of hours nets us 3-4 books pulled out for sale. The problem is that we pick a shelf and start to go over the books and we reminisce about the book in our hand: when we read it, what was happening in our life at the time, what it meant to us, and so on. It’s hard to give up a friend. The easiest books to cull are the ones we read because everyone else was, and it wasn’t our taste anyway, but we didn’t want to talk about it without reading it first. Also, the reference books that are outdated and we have another recent copy anyway. And books by authors that were trendy, the story was good but we won’t reread it.

The books we’re saving are the ones with too many memories attached to let go right now. The books that changed our lives when we read them, because they spoke to something deep inside. I have two shelves of books that I call my comfort shelf. These books are the ones that I reread. Usually, I reread them when I’m feeling really crappy and I need some good wholesome stories of people doing the right thing because it’s the right thing. The characters get hurt, frightened, and scared but they keep going because they know that is what needs to be done. It perks me up when there aren’t enough spoons in the state to get me moving or keep me moving for the day. I’ve read them so often that I know them nearly by heart. Those authors (Steve Miller, Sharon Lee, Lois McMaster Bujold, Jane Austen, Jim Butcher, and Charles deLint) have kept me going through some pretty dark times. But isn’t that what books are for?

I remember as a child, growing up in a very small town in Maine, books were a window to a world that I thought I’d never see in any other way. TV didn’t come into our home until my early teens and by then I was an avid reader — reading before I got to school. I’ve found that books can supply comfort, advice, knowledge, guides to learning new skills, excitement, adventure, and much more. A library is a way to have the world at your finger tips. Whenever, I want to learn something new my first impulse is to find a book about it.

We may never pare down our library to be a “reasonable” size. I don’t know how to let go of these friends who have shared my life. They may be just paper and print, but nevertheless, books have been there for me whenever I needed them. There are so many good memories of the ones I’ve read. And so many possibilities in the shelves of the ones I have yet to read. So meanwhile, we’ll cull the ones that haven’t managed to touch our hearts or fill that space where the books that might be useful references someday get stored. (I doubt I’m the only person that goes to the reference shelf to look up one thing and next thing I know it’s hours later and I can’t even guess how I got from the subject I was looking for to where I was when I realized my butt is numb from sitting on the floor.)

How big is your library? And, how do you keep it under control? How do you store it?

All this weekend, we’ve been clearing up the yard and prepping the garden areas for planting. We’d done this awhile back (the preparation bit) but then with rainy stormy weekends and weekends with temps above 100 — well it didn’t get done. So, this weekend we did it. We got the new herbs for this year in the perennial herb garden which is set up in a circle. Starting at what would be twelve o’clock and going clockwise is the tomato area. Guess you have to grow your own to be safe. But I grow them every year. This year, we put them in containers because we’re still waging a battle with the forest critters. Last year they dug up all the plants in the ground and only left the two we had in containers — so this year it’s containers for the tomatoes.

From 3-6 o’clock is the strawberry garden. We actually got some one day last week. All the others disappeared. Guess we weren’t fast enough. It’s always a race to see who gets the fruit first, us or them, and they usually win. Along the edge are a few herbs in pots. From 6 to 9 o’clock it’s herbs. We have lemon balm, lemon grass, lemon basil, lemon verbena, lamb’s ear, feverfew and sage. Then we have a wedge of rosemary. All the rosemary was pulled up last year because it was too leggy and woody, so it’s all new this year. The final wedge is lavender. Three plants made it and are two years old now. I added four more this year and hope to fill that wedge if they manage to live through the summer, the critters, and the winter.

We also put our blueberry bushes in containers on the deck. This is their second year and we had tons of blooms earlier and now we have actual blueberries. We try to get out in the afternoon to pick whatever ripens to beat the birds to them. Of course, squirrels and even raccoons have been known to climb the stairs to our deck — so it’s our way of trying to beat the critters in the steal the fruit and veggies from Paul and Gayle game.

This year, we put a few other plants on the deck. These Roma tomatoes have already come out and are looking good. I couldn’t resist this container garden with a few herbs and a tomato plant. We also planted watermelon and cantaloupe on the deck in containers (with lattices for them to climb. I’ll probably have to string some slings to hold the fruit if they develop and I expect they will. In years past, we got watermelon and cantaloupe but the critters got them first. As soon as they started getting ripe we’d keep our eyes on them, but then one morning, we’d found that the fruit was nearly all eaten overnight. So, I’m hoping that having some plants on the deck means that we’ll actually get to harvest more of what we plant.

This morning when we walked down to get the paper at the mailboxes, I decided to bring my camera. There has been a cardinal with bright red plumage near the wood pile on our neighbors yard and I thought I might be able to get a photo. Unfortunately, the bird didn’t show but as we came out from the trees we did see two deer. I only got a shot of one of them. Remember this is on the 1/4 mile walk to the mailboxes.

Now do you understand why I love living here. We may be far from shops and stores and neighbors but we’re near many of the things that make life worth living and more in tune with nature. I really mean that, even when we’re waging our losing battle with the critters to get more fruits and veggies from our garden than they do.