I have a talent for growing hair. This is not a skill, mind you; no amount of practice at growing hair makes me get any better at it. If I neglect my hair growing exercises, my hair will not grow more slowly. It grows. I wash and brush it. Times goes by. It gets longer.

When I was a small child, I wasn't allowed to indulge this talent, because I was the middlest of five children. Long hair on a small child isn't something the child takes care of; it's something a parent takes care of, usually the mom, and our mom was way too busy to let us grow our hair long. I thought this was a great injustice, especially when I looked at Susan Miller, whose hair was waist-length and who was rumored never to have had a haircur when we started first grade (in retrospect, this was obviously untrue, because she had bangs, and bangs don't form themselves without assistance from some cutting instrument, but it was close enough to true for six-year-olds).

By the time I was a medium-sized kid, I was inured to the perpetual pixie cuts and the appalling Toni perms that came around just before school pictures. My beautiful older sister grew her hair long once she became a teenager and was free from parental hair care; I kept mine short for a few more years just because I didn't want to be like her, or because it was less trouble, or something. Whatever my reason was, by my senior year in high school it was clearly no longer because it was less trouble, because that year, I set my hair with pincurls every single night to give myself tight little curls, to the point that when I stopped, one of my friends with naturally curly hair asked me enviously how I'd managed to straighten my hair. What a loon I was in those days.

I went to college and grew my hair long, because I could, because my mother wasn't telling me not to, because no one was comparing me to my sister any more. It looked pretty good.

Three times so far, I've cut it all off and donated it. I have really enjoyed the period immediately after cutting it really short, when I went from about two feet of hair to three-quarters of an inch of hair. The difference in weight, heat, and upkeep was substantial. Each of those times, I had been having some back problems, and getting rid of the hair alleviated a bit of the pressure. Long hair gets caught between the back of a chair and my back, and that sudden tug when it's caught can be very unpleasant if my back already hurts.

Every time I grow it really long, I think, this time, I'm going to keep going. This time, my back won't hurt because I'm doing lots of yoga and taking walks and lifting weights. This time, I'm going to grow my hair into Crystal Gayle territory.

And this time, in fact, my back doesn't hurt.

My rotator cuffs do.

Jesus, does it ever hurt to brush that damn hair for half an hour. I shouldn't have to brush it for such a long time, since it's straight, but now that I'm post-menopausal, it tangles more than it used to. I've been late for yoga a few times because it took so long to braid my hair. Doing yoga with the hair down is not an option; it covers my face in triangle pose, it gets caught under my back in bridge pose, it flops around and generally acts like a limp nuisance with bad manners. Sometimes I put it into just one braid, which doesn't take as long as the whole Pippi Longstocking thing, but that's less convenient for yoga than two braids, because then there's the lump right at the back of the neck.

Okay, Kate, if you're so all-fired whiny about your hair, why not just cut it off? What a great suggestion, Ms. or Mr. Interlocutor. Yes, that's just what I'll do. I made an appointment to cut about half the hair off and donate that chunk while still having longish hair left on my head. I counted the hours till the appointment. It was scheduled for 3:30 today. By 4:30 this afternoon, I'd have shoulder-length hair and a tidy hank of hair to send to Cleveland.

Instead, I've had a weekend of cancelled engagements, gallons of hot tea, and languid naps in the middle of the day. I blame society; if I didn't socialize, I wouldn't have encountered this energy-sapping virus.

And I still have over two feet of hair.

I have been informed that Windycon 36 is over. I am hoping that my brains will cease their ear-leakage before I have to return to work on Tuesday.

I couldn't get to sleep last night because I hurt and then I was hungry, so I was awake until 7am. That meant I slept until 3pm, but I hope to get up at a more reasonable time tomorrow. I don't have to get groceries, though, because everything I had on my list was available on sale at Peapod and this is the last free delivery order. I saved about $55 with the delivery deal and coupons, which is pretty good.

The only other thing I've done today is wash sheets and to start putting on the clean ones.

I am linking to this not so much for the discussion of Lunar water (or the possibility that "“there are hints of other intriguing substances” = organic materials) but this discussion of 3He:

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The moon answers me back, saying:
No, you imagined that lonely goddess
shining huntress of chilly night
solitary sister to owls.
I circle you all the time,
night doesn't fall in my orbit,
I dance with gravity.
And as for water, well,
haven't you noticed the tides?

Brand's annotations

[Yeah, not much there now but that will change in a month or three]

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I think it just gets down to experience at school, and subsequent norms of acceptability in social intercourse. One of the reasons Americans don't see it when Brits are being ironic, is because Americans simply will not believe that anyone is so unkind and so socially shriveled that they would casually use deadpan cruelty and nastiness on a perfect stranger for the sake of "a laugh". So an American must interpret an interaction like that as straight, rather than ironic, otherwise they would have to, by their own lights, believe something reprehensible about Britons. In general, Americans simply don't get the idea of cruelty without anomie.

This is part of why I say that Americans are dogs, and Britons are cats.

Just finished The Day of the Muses, which is the fourth SPRQ book by John Roberts.

It was a very nice change-of-pace book because it took place in Alexandria (Egypt) rather than Rome. Decius still had his typical problems of facing disbelief or indifference from his Romans peers, but at least the Egyptian King was somewhat more interested (while not drunk). Mind you, the main villain got away, as ever, because of political influence--but this time Decius assures us that in 12 years' time he's going to get his (because Decius writes from the future, sometime after the fall of the Republic).

It was also neat to see this series move entirely into the time of Rome (the TV series) as we hear that the Triumvirate is sectioning up the world over on the other side of the Mediterranean.

Another fun little read.

Edit: Figured I was done with SPQR for the year, but I see that the next chronological story is a short story, so I've ordered Classical Whodunnits through LINK+ before I forget. I'll have to read about the other authors within, when I get it, and see if any are worth reading ...

Than IDing a gorgonopsid at a glance while watching Primeval?

If not for him, I'd never have seen this idea or this reaction to it. Happily it seems to died faster than that open source boob project.


As a former store owner, allow me to add my voice to those saying "what a very bad idea this very bad idea is."

From "How We Look at the Sea", the chapter on global warming denial in Idiot America:

And that is how most of us look at the sea-- as an afterthought, a secondary, vestigial presence. Its power seem an ancient myth, almost a superstition, like a dragon or snow beast. We fool ourselves into thinking it's something we've outgrown, when it's really only something we've talked ourselves out of believing in. We have become quite good at mistaking amnesia for wisdom.

Velma called 911 and they're at NY Methodist Hospital now. TNH posted about it and that's where the best updates will be.

I slept in until I needed to get up and get ready for the MRI. I went and had the MRI (fell asleep partway through and my head moved, so she woke me up and we redid that part) and am now home and reading and posting online. I haven't done much today.

I still have my wristbands on because the cats played with one that was already on the floor when I got in, and I figure I'll put these in a drawer for later.

Well, I hope so,anyway.

Below the cut you will find a brief report on my progress with Abiding Reflection, the one-volume redaction of what was originally called Going North. ("You certainly can't call it Going North now," remarked Raphael. "There's no going left in it.")

I am trying to be vague enough to avoid major spoilers, but if you are particularly sensitive to them, you may wish not to look.

( It could be worse )

The annotations for the next chapter, Gene Dreams, are

The annotated version of this chapter will be completed after I get off book tour—in November and December, 2009.

—SB

Should I keep going or wait until the annotations are up?

I felt noticably better yesterday than the previous couple of days. Infection still obviously present, but perhaps receding? I'm still tired and prone to bursts of anger, though.

Thursday evening, I went to what I thought was my appointment with the vascular specialist at the cardiology department of my local DOCS. (I had made the appointment through DOCS when I was visiting the very nice orthopedist who said this was outside her balliwick.) It turns out that they had made the appointment for *next* Thursday. But maybe, out of the goodness of his heart, the attending cardiologist, who is not a vascular surgeon at all, would take a look at it if I wanted to wait. They made me fill out all of my insurance information again, despite the fact that I had been at DOCS four times in the previous 31 days; I did this on a tablet computer which then tried to make me watch advertisements about bladder control products at the end of the signin. About an hour after I arrived, they asked me for my co-pay; I explained that I wasn't going to pay them anything until I could ask the doctor whether he would actually be able to do anything for me, since I *already knew my diagnosis* and I was simply there for treatment.

They refused. The doctor literally would not come to the door to talk to me about whether he could possibly help me unless I agreed to pay my co-pay--which would in turn allow them to charge my insurance company for the whole visit. I left without being seen.

My haemotologist recommended a vascular specialist in White Plains, and I have an appointment there on Monday. When I called DOCS yesterday to make sure that they canceled my appointment for next Thursday, they couldn't even access their own calendar to check.

God bless the best health care system in the world except for the 37 which are better including Cuba.