A Curious Statistical Anomaly

I was wandering around this morning and early afternoon, feeling like I was thinking through a fog and wondering where all my spoons had gone. In spite of it all, I’d managed to work my way through a user’s guide and half a system administration guide. That was in prep for some software I’m configuring for a website that I’m working on (contract work). Anyway, seems that caffeine didn’t help and I didn’t dare start to do anything I couldn’t afford to screw up so I was taking notes — imagine real notes in the margins and highlighting the parts I knew I’d have to do later when the brain fog cleared.

I even, in desperation, cleared off the dining room table (currently my desk). More coffee. Considered pain meds but decided against it. I thought I’d just bear with it for a while. Then the thunder started rolling in. Phone rings and Paul says he’s coming home early, they just got a bulletin from the weather service that there were severe storm warning out. I hung up and the wind started to pick up. The sky darkened. The wind really, really, started whipping through the trees. I stood with my coffee and watched a limb come down off one of the huge trees at the end of the driveway. Luckily it wasn’t a heavy one just long and thin and whippy. It was almost beautiful the way it did this slow swirling somersault through the branches and landed in/near the driveway. I wasn’t about to go check on it because the big trees out front were swaying at least two to three feet off plumb.

Then the rain came. It was so heavy I couldn’t even see the plant pots on the deck outside the sliding doors. Luckily, I’d brought in the seedlings when Paul called. We lost the lights of course. They came on about 2 1/2 hours later maybe later.

In the midst of the storm, I finally realize — no wonder I couldn’t think straight. Storm coming — barometric pressure shifts. At least there was a reason for all the internal fog. Finished a book, Maggie Sefton’s Dyer Consequences (My review will be reviewed in Gumshoe Review‘s July issue.)

The radio said hundreds of thousands of people in Maryland and Virginia were without power. Another storm just rolled through staring about an hour ago — actually, it still is, but not as impressive as earlier. From what the radio said it was really bad in some places with a tornado or possibly two. We were luck. Paul said there were at least 8 trees down on the drive home turning the road into one lane but he got home safe.

Nature can be so beautiful and dangerous at the same time. I love to watch lightning storms from the comfort of my home. But enjoying the light show, you can forget just how much raw power is being released with each strike. Then there’s the wind and the damage to property and surrounding natural landscapes (trees, bushes, gardens…).

I hope damage was limited to things…I hate when people and animals are injured or killed in storms. It’s the randomness of the damage. There’s no way you can prepare except for what you can do in general. Storms hit here and not there for no reason other than chance. Nature doesn’t reason — it just is.

Hyperion here. I didn’t tell Gayle at the time, since I didn’t want her to worry, but the bulletin we received said that a line of thunderstorms was approaching at 60 miles per hour. It looked likely to spawn tornados as well, so either get out of the way, or get to a shelter. Since it was heading west to east, and I live east of work, I decided to bug out before the storm hit and out run it if I could. In the five minutes it took me to shut things down and get to the parking garage, the weather went from cloudy, but still, to black clouds, high wind, and torrential rains. The power also started flickering in the building. I was suppose to go to the recycling center and the post office on the way home, but decided I preferred staying alive. I skedaddled home as quickly as I could and did manage to stay ahead of the worst of it. Still, it knocked a lot of tree limbs down onto the road, and even a couple of whole trees. Traffic lights were also out for the last 20 miles of the trip. Miraculously, the other drivers actually slowed down and behave rationally, so other than having to swerve around debris in the road, the trip wasn’t actually that bad. After that we had a nice late afternoon reading by oil lamp and wind-up lanterns, and now the powers back (obviously) and the rain has settled down to a nice relaxing hiss outside.

That’s a line from one of my favorite movies, Real Genius. Of course, I haven’t seen it in quite a while because the tape player is downstairs and disconnected and I don’t have the DVD — yet. If you haven’t see it, it’s a great nerdy techie movie.

Meanwhile, today I found a stockpile of spoons and managed to get a lot of stuff done including a walk to the mailbox and back, doing the laundry, cooking supper, cleaning up the living room a bit, sweeping all the floors, entering all the new books that came in, putting some books that are older up for sale (to get them out from under foot), answered email questions from reviewers, made arrangements to deliver some review copies to reviewers at Balticon this weekend (saving postage), and generally catching up on all the things I haven’t gotten to this week. If I don’t find all the spoons disappeared during the night, hopefully tomorrow I can start in on the second third of my To Do list.

The sad news is no knitting today and no fiber spinning either. I miss my creative fix — sometimes writing and coding help to make up the creative deficit of no fiber/knitting but other days the itch to create remains. However, I was reminded that June 14th is World Wide Knit in Public Day so I have that to look forward to — wondering what events will happen in Maryland that I might manage to get to… I anyone knows of anything happening knitting related on June 14th in Maryland feel free to leave a comment.

Paul and I will be at Balticon this weekend. If you’re also going to be there please stop and say hello. We’ll both have SFRevu name tags as well as our Balticon ones. Sam Tomaino will also be there (he’s does our short fiction/zine reviews). We’ll probably at some point be helping out, or rather hanging out, near the Capclave table. Capclave is the annual convention of the Washington Science Fiction Association (WSFA) — a great group and a great convention.

It’s raining again today. At least it is off and on. I’ve been told that this is the wettest May in 55 years and the month isn’t even over. Flooding has caused a lot of problems and damage in other areas. Here at our home, we’re on fairly high ground. The only problem is that, last week, Paul had to drive an extra 20 miles out of his way to find a route that wasn’t closed off due to flooding in order to get home.

Currently, I’m reading Bring it On by Laura Anne Gilman. The review will be in the June issue of SFRevu. I’ve been having a lot of migraines lately and reading is something I can do with a headache. Can’t think myself out of a paper bag, but I can read. I guess if I concentrate hard enough on the plot and the characters then I can sort of put the migraine to the side. But, if I have to think to write, it comes to the front and next thing I know I’m hugging the porcelain express and wishing for unconsciousness no matter how much medication I take.

Anyway, I’ve read the first two books of this series and really enjoyed them. This is more of the same — convoluted plots, lots of atmosphere, witty people, smart writing, engaging characters, and so well done you’re there watching the story unfold and no one can see you — because you’re the reader.

Along with the rainy weather and up and down barometric pressure, I’ve been doing some thinking about mother’s and daughters. Mom called today and asked what I was doing. So, I explained that I was working on a web site project, getting it revamped and updated with new functions for a professional women’s group. After Mom finished laughing, she explained to me how ridiculous that was, since women couldn’t possibly be professionals or organized so I should just forget it. I realize there is a generation gap every time something like this come up.

Before I left my last job to work from home because of health issues, I did the same job as my husband (computer analyst with some system administration). She was all excited about what he did but never asked for details about what I did. Arrgggh. (Do you sense the frustration?).

Most of the time I can just tell myself that it really doesn’t matter. She grew up in June Cleaver world and I reached for what I wanted. Many times, I was the only woman in the room, on the team, or in the building who wasn’t clerical. I got used to working with so many men–some who didn’t quite know what to do or how to act about this strange creature intruding into their environment. Now, things have changed and where I last worked I think the male/female ratio was about 50/50 at the worker (computer programmer) level. The ratio is much more skewed to men in management and in some areas (hardware and systems administration) but even that it is changing–slowly, but changing.

What I wonder is what do other daughters do when their jobs are belittled by their mothers? I’m comfortable with myself and not defined by my job but it does take up a large portion of my time. I take pride in what I do and would like to say I finished X project and think I did a good job. Even a “that’s nice” would be better than telling me it wasn’t worth doing in the first place. I want to note that I fully realize that my mother loves me, that’s not at issue. It’s just that her definition of a woman’s place is so decidedly different from mine. I’m fully aware that I don’t meet her expectations of what a daughter should be like. There are so many things in my life that I can’t share and I feel sad about that but the only way I’ve found to reduce the stress is to just change the subject to something we can share like our shared love of mysteries for example.

I’m wonder how other women deal with this issue in their lives. Do other daughters and mothers have a problem understanding each other as the roles of women have changed. Have any of you, had to come up with coping strategies for a similar situations? Comments as always welcome…

It took me much longer than I thought to find a cup that said “May. I’m the May cup. Over here.” I looked at a good number of cups until I found this one. The big leaves and bright orange flower just reminded me of May flowers — so, it’s now my May cup. While searching, I found a number of sunflower cups but sunflowers somehow seem fall-ish to me so I picked one up and declared it to be October’s cup and put it in the depths of a drawer until Fall. (Now if I can remember it’s there everything will be fine.)

It’s been raining the last few days. Not constantly but in those on again off again spurts that mean you can’t work in the garden because it’s just muddy glop. So, I’m happy to announce that the tomato plants I started have begun to sprout. One variety is already up with one set of leaves. The second variety just poked 3 sprouts out today. No leaves of course, just the first hint that the seeds are sprouting. I brought pots and trays in a few days ago fearing rain, so hopefully tomorrow I can start some more seeds.

We have a Meyer lemon tree. This is its third year. The first year we got one lemon. The second year we got two. This year there were tons of buds (at least 25). The entire house smelled wonderful as the blooms opened up. Some are now dropping the flowers and we hope to have a lot of fruit buds soon. We keep the tree in the house during the winter near the sliding glass doors on the deck so it can get sunshine. As soon as the temps stay up during the night, we’ll put it out on the deck. It seems to really like it there. I’m hoping for much more fruit this year.

A big limb fell off one of the trees in the driveway during the night last night. Luckily, it landed between the rose bush, the car port, and the azalea. So no damage. Once things dry out a bit, we’ll haul it over to the pile of downed limbs to be cut up and stacked for firewood. It seems that every time it rains limbs just drop off here and there. At least this time they didn’t land in the driveway or the road.

So, it’s still raining. I can hear it softly spattering on the windows, the deck, and the skylight. Think I’ll go cuddle up with a cuppa tea and a book.

Hyperion here: We did get a good sized limb down in the driveway. I went out first thing and hauled all the various fragments (it was probably 10′ long and 4 inches thick before it hit the ground) to the wood pile. The good news is that most of them are already small enough to fit in the wood stove, so in the minute or so it took to haul them to the racks I gained nearly a full days supply of firewood with no cutting, chopping, or splitting. It works for me.

On the other hand, all this rain is really getting in the way of getting the yard cleaned up. During our last dry spell, we managed to get all the leaves cleared out of the garden area and to get all the leaves beside the carport raked up into piles. Usually I get one of our really large tarps and rake all the leaves on to it. Then it’s just a matter of folding it up like a fajita and hauling it out into the woods and dumping it. Of course, now all those nice piles I had prepared are 75% water by weight. I need at least three dry days to turn them over a few times and dry them out before I’ll be able to do anything with them.

Such is life in the land where trees rule with an iron limb.

I always loved Simon and Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence. It’s melancholy and matches the mood of a rainy day or one of those days when it rains even when the sun shines and the sky is clear blue. But I got to thinking about silence today and the song popped into my head. I love the lyrics but especially:

People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening

While my thoughts run in a different direction, it does come to a point of a sort. People are always saying: “I couldn’t live out where you do, it’s too quiet”. Well yes, it doesn’t have all the city noises, but trucks go by about a half mile away on the main road. Neighbors do mow their fields with rather loud tractors. Grackles chirp and yell at each other in clouds off and on throughout the day. The squirrels chitter and scamper through the leaves. The winds blows through the trees with a sort of soft shushing sounds, unless of course it’s a storm and then it’s with a loud sort of howling thrum. So it’s not quiet here — there are just different sounds from a city.

Friends were visiting one day and we were sitting with lemonade and talking. The screen door was all that was between us and the outside when our male friend said, “Don’t you have some music or something, this quiet is weird?” The woman said, “Don’t you hear the chimes and the birds — that’s a sort of music?”

I seldom have the radio on. It’s on the upper floor and I have to have it really loud to hear it on the second floor. Playing a CD slows the laptop so I don’t do that either most of the time either. Moving the radio down to the floor I’m on (it does play CDs) is just more trouble than it’s worth most days. So, I work with the sounds of silence or to be more exact, the sounds of nature all around me. I hear the birds, the bees, the hawks, the cars along the distant roads, the thundering crash of a tree limb falling in the woods occasionally for spice, and the gentle sounds of wind and rippling leaves. That’s a music that many people not only don’t hear, but when they are so used to sound/noise/distractions in their environments, they actually find the sounds of silence unnerving.

When I’m out and about I see all the people on their cell phones, talking, listening to iPods and, because they are so awash in sound, they miss the smaller things. Rain on concrete. Doves cooing. And in some places, the screech of gulls fighting over food. There is so much sound everywhere — it’s just what you choose to listen too — or, unfortunately, what you’re often forced to hear.

There are some sounds that raise blood pressure and some that can help lower it. There are sounds that assist learning and others that inhibit learning. There are sounds that can make us irritable and others that can sooth. As our environments at work, on the streets, and at home become filled with sounds, we don’t have much choice or control except over the sounds at home.

What sounds do you prefer when you can control the volume and type? There are times I love loud Techno Rock and others when Jazz or Classical music fits the mood. But most of the time it’s the just the sounds that come through my screen door.

Have you ever noticed that flat surfaces attract clutter. I believe that if you have a house that has only a coffee table and one chair, and no one ever visits and no one lives there, that within a month the coffee table will be piled high with clutter — usually paper based clutter. Really, it happens to every flat surface in the world. I bet if you traveled to the center of the salt flats you’d find a huge pile of paper based clutter or tumble weeds (wood pulp or paper based in a squinted viewpoint). All flat surfaces attract clutter the minute you turn your back.

It seems lately hat my life is being taken over by a burning desire to have at least one flat surface in the house that is not cluttered. I’ve been clearing the dining room table for months now. Today, I achieved partial table top. I mean, I could actually see the wood surface of the table in places. Really, it’s been under so much stuff: books, papers, notes to self, magazines, knitting (usually socks), pens, envelopes, unopened mail, opened mail, various piles of mail, catalogs, …. I’m sure you get the picture. [Note the picture is the azalea bushes outside — no one gets to see the huge pile of clutter on the table because I’m sure as bad as you can imagine it — it’s worse.]

Last year I started to live to a plan to open and deal with all mail on the day it arrived. It either goes into the stack to get paid or the recycle bin or, if it has personal info, into the shredder, or it gets answered and then into the trash, a file, or the shredder. That seems to work pretty well but my desk is now the dining room table and things have gotten out of hand. Monday, I decided this has got to stop. So yesterday and today all breaks have been spent clearing piles off the table and putting them where they belong. And today, I struck wood surface. I’m hoping by the end of tomorrow to have the whole surface cleaned to the point that I can have out my datebook and a notebook and put it away each night and have a clear table.

Sigh…it’s a wonderful thing to have a goal, a dream to work towards. It’s even better if that dream is achievable. I do so want to win one surface free of the flat surface clutter curse.

Today is our second day of temperatures in the mid-80’s. Earlier in the week, I’d managed to rake up a lot of the garden area and today we raked the piles onto a tarp and dumped them toward the back of our property. Hopefully, the leaves will compost into soil and by the time we get around to working back that far they will not be leaves still, or less leaf like at least.

I noticed today that the azalea bushes are all filled with buds. We have three fairly big bushes. One on each side of the path to the shed. One between the two trees just in front of the house with the cement fake deer (don’t ask, it came with the house — they couldn’t move it). And a very small one we planted two years ago that is now a middling bush about 1-2 feet high. Two of the bushes have pink flowers and two are a more purple-ish color.

The peony trees also have buds. Seems that each year we get more buds than the year before. We’ve got two peony trees. We also have five peony bushes but only four of them are above the leaves — haven’t raked there yet. We dug around the leaves and the other bush has come up but is under the leaves. Tomorrow we hope to rake the leaves out of that area. I’ve uncovered all the strawberry plants and most of the perennial herb area. The lemon balm is sprouting up and the sage made it through the winter. Three of the lavender plants are also looking good. So, I’m really getting the spring fever to get things ready for the summer garden. Might even start some tomato seeds tomorrow.

On the down side, with the heat we discovered that the heat pump when switched to cool … doesn’t. So we’ve got the fans set up to move the basement’s cooler air up to the living areas. Got the ceiling fans going and the screen door open on the deck. It’s still warmer inside than out but livable. We had this problem last year and the heat pump/furnace thingy (original to the house, so very old) didn’t work and we got the very last part the company had available in this state and it worked the rest of the summer. A few months ago the heat part started going wonky but we have the wood stove so we didn’t mind too much and figured we could last another year if the cooling worked. So, guess now we’ll have to get estimates on getting a new furnace/heat pump which blows the budget to do some work on the basement (I was so hoping for walls and a ceiling down there). Oh, well. I do want AC before we hit the over 100 degree F days in Maryland.

Last night was the 1st Friday WSFA meeting in Virginia. It was the usual business meeting followed by some socializing. Charles Stross was in DC and came to the meeting. His book, Halting State, is a 2008 Hugo Nominee. If you enjoy hard science, science fiction take a minute to read the review on the link and get the book and read it.

Today, it was back to Virginia for a meeting of the Capclave 2008 committee. This year’s guests of honor are James Morrow and Michael Dirda. Last year’s convention was a lot of fun as well as informative. This year’s convention is shaping up to be just as good. We’re working on putting together a great schedule of program items as well as some workshops (check last years program, we’ll probably have similar ones this year — but keep an eye on the official website). If you have never been to a local science fiction convention and you live in the Washington, DC area consider joining us for Capclave 2008.

Then it was time to run all our weekend errands in what was left of the day. Why is it that during the week, you think well we can do x, y, z, a, b, …. w this weekend. Then the weekend comes and all the stuff you can’t do because of work has to be done as well as any other plans that require two people to do and before you know it, it’s midnight on Saturday and you only have one more day of the weekend left and 40 billion things to do.

I seem to remember that when I was young there was talk of having a 4 or even a 3 day work week by the year 2000. Here we are in 2008 and most Americans are working 50 hour weeks with less vacation time than ever before as employers cut back on benefits. And to top it all off, weekends become the time to do all the things that should have been done during the week, but work wouldn’t allow time to do — food shopping, housework, laundry, household chores. I work at home and I still can’t keep up — maybe it’s a leak in my hours. I’m sure time is slipping away when I don’t look. Just last week it was January and today it’s April… I think Einstein and I need to have a talk about this relativity thing.