the wife

Wireless

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So, I had no wireless on my laptop and that was frustrating. To test if it was a software or hardware problem, I reinstalled the OS, set up a new user and found that the problem was still there. If a fresh install of the software didn’t fix it, it must be hardware.

So I rode the bus across town yesterday to The Mac Store because they had a usb wireless adapter for sale. As the sales guy talked to the repair guy about the device, the repair guy suggested I pay to have it fixed instead.

“I can’t afford it,” I told him.

He shrugged and took the adapter off the wall. I asked if I could try it out right here in the store. He shrugged again and we started opening the package (which had been opened once before).

The install disc doesn’t do much in the way of installing, and the repair guy starts fussing with it. You know that feeling when someone else is typing on your computer and you want to push their hands away and do it all the right way? I fight that urge.

While I’m looking at the contents of the adapter package, the repair guy does something to my computer that completely fixes the wireless. As in, it was software all along and he’s thoroughly solved the problem. I make him explain it to me, showing me that he went into System Preferences and created a new “location” which easily connected to the web.

And he did it in the ten seconds that I was looking at a page of the user manual. He also didn’t charge me.

The Mac Store on 45th in the U District. They are awesome.

Today I will be rousing myself from this morning’s (somewhat unproductive) writing session and I’ll head downtown to buy an anniversary gift, after a very long walk to buy some stuff we need. It’s a school holiday, so my son has a chance to hang out with a buddy across town all day. Once I’m done, I’ll head home and do some more writing from there.

Friday quick notes

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1) I’m taking the family to see Steven Tobolowski live on our local NPR affiliate this morning. Exciting! My son loves his show (my son loves oral storytelling) and we can’t wait to see how it goes. And I don’t think I have to say that I’m also a big fan of Steve Scher, the interviewer.

2) I get a lot of people asking me about the status of the Twenty Palaces books, so I’m going to say: Please stop. I’m waiting to hear something official from my editor at Del Rey, but I’m not going to announce anything until I get the final word from them.

Believe me, when I finally hear, the first person I share the news with will be my wife. The second person will be the whole rest of the world. But it’s a stressful time right now, so please don’t keep prodding me. When I know, you’ll know, believe me.

3) After years of hearing about other writers receiving anthology invitations, I’ve started getting some of my own. The only one I’m sure I’m allowed to talk about is a book related to Evil Hat’s Don’t Rest Your Head rpg, which is being edited by Chuck Wendig. And I have a nasty little story idea in mind…

4) I sent a revised copy of A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark to my agent. New book! Hopefully soon.

5) I’ve been planning a large politics post for quite a while, and hearing that the U.S. government just killed a U.S. citizen without due process is prodding me to get around to it. Watch (or avoid) this space.

Overdoing and Underdoing.

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So I’ve been doing the Livestrong calorie/fitness counter and it’s been fine so far. I get a little hungry but nothing that makes me want to yell at my kid or whatever.

But yesterday got a little nuts. We made a run to the Staples, the boy and I, for various supplies (note to my agent if you’re reading this: yes, we bought a new phone), walking a mile and a half to get there.

After lunch, my wife came home from work early and we went to the local park. We hiked to the beach, then hiked back, over an hour and a half, which is a long way considering our various problems with our legs. We hopped over to the bus stop, all sweaty and exhausted, to wait for our ride home.

Except the driver picked us up, took us one stop, and told us he was taking a 30-minute break. We could take another bus if we wanted at this next stop, but since we weren’t going downtown that was worth fuck-all to us. We had no choice but to wait until 9pm for the bus or walk all the way home.

Let’s just say that I arrived home and realized my calorie intake was a negative number for the day. Not just below my goal: below zero.

“Oh my god,” I said to my wife. “I can eat anything I want.”

Mmm, grilled cheese sandwich with mayo and hot peppers. (840 calories)

Anyway, today will be a recovery day.

In unrelated news to my physical health but closely related to my mental health, I’m going to start an internet fast on Sat the 10th of September.

That’s right. I’ll be logging off and staying off.

I will check my emails once a day. I won’t be blogging, or reading my LJ friends list, or posting earworms on Facebook, or goofing around on Twitter. I’ll check email and allow my dropbox files to do their thing, then I’ll turn off my modem.

It’ll be a useful way to re-examine my internet habits (the way I used to when I did actual food-type fasts) and hopefully up my productivity. It’d be nice to have a little extra family time, too.

Anyway, I’m going offline to run some errands. Don’t forget there’s a Twenty Palaces spoiler thread to check out.

Quick Friday post

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1. I have promised a thread for spoilery discussions of the Twenty Palaces books. I have not forgotten this promise.

2. Today is the day I travel around Seattle (by bus!) signing book stock in stores. Fun! Okay, not. Actually, it’ll be a good time to do some reading and thinking about item 3.

3. My agent got back to me with some notes about A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark. They seem very straightforward but will require a bit of fixing to address. Must turn on brain.

4. My agent has also shamed me into replacing my phone. Let us not speak of this further.

5. The Livestrong calorie counter is making me rethink my devotion to kielbasa and peanut butter.

6. Booster Gold is a terrific character.

7. My email inbox has been exploding for weeks. I’m not sure what to do about it, but I have to do something.

8. Last night was date night for my wife and me. Unfortunately, our sitter never showed (don’t know why) so we ended up cooking some quick, sorta-crappy food and then rushing out to Elliott Bay Marina to see “Cirque du Sail” a couple who travel around the world on their sailboat, with their kids, and pay their way by doing acrobatic shows in the rigging for donations. Last night was the final Seattle show but they’ll be in San Francisco in a few days. They’re very good. Check it out if you can.

9. One the way to the Marina last night, my wife turned to me and said “Thanks for coming to see this thing with me.” I said: “Hey, it’s Date Night! We just had bad food and now we’re going to see some unlikely entertainment. The only difference is that we’re dragging the boy behind us in a little red wagon.” Date night, everybody.

10. Time to get out of here and start signing. Have a great holiday weekend, Holiday Weekend People.

“That’s the end?”

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That was my wife and son’s reaction when I read the final line of The Hobbit to them last night. (It was this edition, so we had to stop often to admire the artwork–although I can’t say I was fond of the way the elves were portrayed.)

As family reading time goes, this was a long one, or maybe it just seemed long because I was the only one reading it. Usually we trade chapters between the three of us, but there was no way I was going to ask my dyslexic wife to read all those dwarf names over and over. That would have been hell for her. And since my son is not enthusiastic about reading aloud at the best of times, I gladly took on the task myself.

The only problem: we were watching DVD previews of… something last week (not a good sign, eh?) and the LOTR blue ray was one of them my son was startled to hear Elijah Wood say the name “Gandalf.”

“Didn’t you know?” I said. “The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are set in the same world. They’re connected.”

“Oh. Let’s read those next.”

And my heart sank. I’m happy that he’s (finally) warming up to fantasy, but there’s no way I can ask my wife to read LOTR aloud, so all the books would be on me and me alone.

Not only that, but much of Fellowship… is freaking dire. I’m sorry; I know there are people out there who lurve the books so much they read them every year or whatever, but too much of the early travel stuff is just tedious. And Bilbo’s birthday party takes forever to get to.

I’m tempted to break the family rule and skip the books in favor of the movies.

DATE NIGHT!

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My wife and I strolled through Ballard, visited the fish ladder at the locks (where we saw quite a few salmon–the run is still going strong), then had dinner. Pulled pork pizza with butternut squash, apples, pancetta, and garlic ftw. Thank you, Ballard Firehouse.

And Pikachu help me but my legs hurt, I’m covered with dried sweat and I can barely keep my eyes open. Bed! Tomorrow is for writing.

Well, this is disappointing.

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Thanks to a link on Twitter, I stumbled across a tech article about a font especially designed to be easily read by dyslexics. It’s called Dyslexie, and while it’s not what you’d call pretty, it is very, very functional.

As some of you might remember, my wife is pretty severely dyslexic. When I showed her the article (and the video, which is pretty interesting in its own right) she thought it was astonishing. It really did make reading much easier for her.

Of course I wanted to get it for her, so I could make it the default font on her iPad. Here’s the problem: according to what I can find, the font is only available to universities, institutions, and other large groups but not individuals. And it costs around 450 Euros. That’s out of our reach.

Hey, the guy created it and gets to market it however he likes. I’m not going to yank it off some torrent site. But if the only dyslexics who can benefit from it are the ones at rich schools? That sucks.

Today is our neighborhood festival

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There’s a huge slide set up around the corner and ponies are eating the grass of the baseball field. The art exhibit and other stalls are all set up, and there’s a beer garden, too. Bounce houses? didn’t see them on my way over but I can’t imagine they won’t be set up later.

I know my wife and son will be dropping by later to have their fun. I hope I can still be here to meet them.

Birthday Gift Report!

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So Friday was my birthday. I woke up at my usual 5am work time and did my pages. What’s more, I added even more cool stuff to the end of A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark–it sounds self-serving to say this, I know, but I’m getting really excited about this book (and I can’t wait to be done with it and move on to a new thing).

What did I find when I arrived home? A giant gift-wrapped box on my dining room table. My son, naturally, was super-excited to have me open it, but I was exhausted from several long days and begged a nap (gift one).

After we had our fruit salad and I did the whole wish/candle thing, I tore it open. It turned out to be a George Foreman Grill (gift two).

Now, I’m skeptical of electric cooking appliances. I use our food processor and stand mixer all the time, but specific gadgets for cooking? Too fussy, too messy, too much trouble to take out and put away. Especially that last one. I use the crock pot about once a week, and even though it’s fine for the first two, it’s a pain in the ass for third. We just don’t have that much counter space or storage.

But this gadget? The cooking plates come out and fit in the dishwasher, it has no controls beyond an on/off switch, and it folds up pretty compactly.

What’s more, my wife had picked out a beautiful steak for me to have for dinner (gift three) and it cooked up beautifully. I can’t wait to try potatoes, asparagus, and (naturally) burgers in it. My son is eager to put a personal pizza in it, and I’m game for that.

One other birthday gift turned up at the end of the night. Google Alerts brought me this: Publishers Weekly gave Circle of Enemies a starred review. (gift four) That means I’m 3 for 3 for PW reviews. :) I’m seriously pleased about this.

Anyway, I’m back to making donuts. At this point, it’s a sprint to the end of the draft. I just wish it wasn’t so damn gorgeous outside, which is like a gift I can’t play with. Local temp for July 2nd: 78F. Sunday the second is expected to be ten degrees cooler.

I am in New York

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Actually I’m in a Starbucks on the upper west side, near the American Museum of Natural History. My wife and son are meeting me here and then we’re going to see some dinosaur bones and maybe some of the guys who hassled Ben Stiller that time. Starbucks! Ubiquitous meeting place of the phoneless.

We’ve been here less than 24 hours and already my son is asking about rent in the city. I think it’s safe to say that he likes it, although it requires a little more walking than he’s used to.

My wife is absolutely stunned by how clean and nice the city is. We’re staying downtown, where her old stomping grounds were, and she just keeps saying “It’s changed so much! My god, I’m old aren’t I?”

Me, I just had lunch with my agent at (checks card) the dici–a place that loves big knives and lower case letters. My food was really good, even though the humidity took the edge off my appetite. But omg rare beef with sweet peppers! I’m happy. We talked about a lot of interesting things and I have a ton of thinking to do. More on that later, maybe.

Still haven’t had pizza yet. (See first paragraph about >24 hours) There’s a little place near our hotel that looks like it would be nice to try, so we can sample some Real New York Pizza(tm). What’s the name of it? Sbarro’s, I think. Can’t wait!

(Just kidding, New Yorkers, I swear. I know Sbarro’s is airport pizza.)

Anyway, this morning we did the tourist thing and went to the top of the Empire State Building. It was a challenge for my wife to have been a New Yorker for so many years and now play tourist (and that place is highly concentrated tourist time) but I eased her through the experience by exclaiming things like “So many tall buildings!” and “The trains run under the ground!” and other things sure to make locals think we’re cool.

We’ve ridden the subway several times; as I’ve told my son, the sights and sounds are soooo recognizable from a million movies and TV shows. Just about anyone in the developed world knows the NY Subway sound. That weird metallic EEEeeeEEEeeEEEEE! we always hear.

My family has joined us, so I’m logging off. Hope you guys are enjoying your week.