Rapture of the Deep

Today, finally, was Ajani’s vet appointment, following up on his brief illness a month ago (which I’m now convinced was caused by the temporary change in diet). He’s been fine since then, and the vet remarked again and again how well he looks now. He’s probably the healthiest he’s been in years. Of course, we’ll need the results of the blood tests, etc., to be sure. (She also showed the photo of Ajani cuddling with a teddy bear, back when he lost his brother, to the new assistant.)

I also attended the Scientist Retreat at work today, for a few hours, and virtually. I did an update on my own work – I sure hope someday I have something more exciting to report.

Later, I spent a bunch of time investigating the various Medicare options (ignoring Medicare “Advantage” plans). It looks like it will cost me about $250 a month, for parts A (hospital), B (medical), and D (prescription drugs). J pays about $110 a month for the plan for his employer for his own coverage, and maybe another $370 or so to add one or more family members, so it probably makes sense for me to switch to Medicare, especially as D is now on S’s work plan (much better than his own work plan, and after he turned 26 in July he was no longer eligible for J’s plan). Also, J’s plan has a high deductible, and Medicare does not.

It’s annoying how they have the prescription drug plan. If you don’t start paying about $40 a month for the coverage when you turn 65, they add about 40 cents a month for each month you wait to sign up. So if you’re like me and don’t have any prescriptions, you’re paying a bunch for something you’re not using, and you can’t really afford to wait because the cost keeps growing and growing. (And of course, if you suddenly do need a costly prescription in the middle of the year, then you’re out of luck for all the months that pass until you can start paying for Part D in the new year.)

Although I’m quite interested to learn the results, I wasn’t looking forward to the blood testing experience since I used to faint (or nearly so) when I was younger. J had a break between meetings and drove me to the clinic, and it was all quite straightforward. They let me lean back in a (rather awkward) chair, and I had no light-headedness at all.

Beyond that, I got some work done, went for a walk at sunset and took photos, and watched the first episode in a new PBS series about especially talented performers. This first episode was on Itzhak Perlman, and (health permitting) he’ll be here in Eugene in just over three months!

I like when it’s the time of year that I just want to keep my legs under the covers when I wake up for the day, and that in the evening I can wrap a nice fuzzy blanket around myself without overheating. It’s also extra-pretty outside, with the fall color and often nice sunsets, and the grass is all green again from the first rains.

This week’s Friday movie had a “haunted” theme, and I was still tired from yesterday and not ambitious about subjecting myself to movie-stress, so voting was complicated. I definitely didn’t want to watch Scream 2, and although I’m sure I should see The Sixth Sense, I didn’t know if I had the stamina for it. My preference was Casper, but very few people were voting for it. However! There’s a rule that if there’s a tie for first among the three movies, then the third-place movie wins. At first, I thought, if people really want to watch Scream 2, then I should just find a different way to entertain myself. But then people kept mentioning that they were voting for The Sixth Sense just to keep Scream 2 from winning, whereas they actually wanted Casper. So I watched closely, and as it got to the deadline, Scream 2 and The Sixth Sense each had 8 votes, and Casper had 2 votes… so Casper won! And I didn’t even have to cast my vote to create the tie.

Anyway, it turned out that Casper was fine, if you didn’t think about it very much. The house had cool architecture, and there was a pretty piano theme. After the movie, I read for a while, then I watched J start playing the new Castlevania game, Belmont’s Curse.

Empress of Dust, by Alex Kingsley. Bastion Cycle #1. At this year’s Worldcon, the author was one of the most interesting speakers in one of the most interesting panels, so I looked them up and ordered this book. Very entertaining! Hundreds of years in the future, after North America has been reshaped by massive earthquakes, there is one city that is working to reclaim humanity’s place on the planet, and the rest of the land is desert roamed by giant crabs and various bizarre arthropod/lizard creatures.

In the city, marginalized young adults are turned out into the desert in teams of four “scavengers,” whose job is to locate ancient buildings and bring back potentially useful bits of technology. Harvard is a member of one such scavenger team, the “Ivies,” but he’s rather delicate and shy and far too curious about the strange creatures of the desert. The story is very well paced and often surprising. We also get the backstories for three of the team members, which gives the book more depth. The fourth member, who is a relatively macho male, is also treated with sympathy rather than dismissed as problematic. I greatly enjoyed the book, and I’m looking forward to reading more – I have the second in hand already.

Minor comments: (1) I could see that there’s a real advantage when writing about a small group if there’s a nonbinary character, as there’s much less pronoun confusion when one person is “she,” one is “he,” and one is “they.” (2) Although the book is not self-published, it could have used a bit more copyediting. It is much better in that regard than self-published books tend to be, though, and I did smile every time I read that someone was going to sleep on a “palette.”

Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton. I read this before, in 2020 and in 2023, and I’m sure I’ll read it many more times – it’s a classic, and absolutely delightful. It’s a story of several families in a Trollope-style society, with problems of courtship, inheritance, social justice, and personal achievement, and all of the characters are dragons. They fly around like dragons (except for the clerics and servants, whose wings are bound), they eat flesh like dragons (especially one’s deceased parents)… they are definitely, physiologically dragons, but the women love to wear cute little hats, and everyone is concerned about their social standing.

Let’s see if I can find my favorite line from this time… okay, Avan is visiting the courthouse for the first time, which has “a huge, cavernous entrance, carved all around with hearts, flowers, and other abstract expressions of justice.” Avan is mildly terrified, knowing that even though his legal case is well founded, the judges could choose to eat anyone they please. Then as they’re going further into the building, “They were facing a flight of granite steps topped by three huge steps, with another threatening carving of hearts surrounded by flowers and coils of fleece set over it.” Ha ha! Their symbolism is rather different from ours.

My only quibble with the book is that one of the main characters is named “Sher,” and most of the time I read a sentence starting with his name, I read it as “She” and have to reread it more carefully. Of course this doesn’t affect the audiobook audience at all.

This evening I finally did something I’d intended to do last year but never got around to – I managed to get myself to watch one of the Worldcon panels I’d missed. I hadn’t gotten to see Robert Jackson Bennett at all, so I really wanted to see this one, which also had Martha Wells – and Brenda Clough, who gave Martha a sock toy of Murderbot! It turns out Brenda C. lives in Portland, and her last name is pronounced “cluff.” The other two, whom I hadn’t heard of before, were Reuben “Tihi” Hayslett and Inez Ray. The topic was, “Reading Is Political,” and the authors, who are all reasonably similar to me in terms of political leanings, had lots to say. They generally agreed that none of us today is likely to become Harriet Beecher Stowe and change the world dramatically with our writing, but it’s good for us to write for our own sakes, and (in their cases, not mine) to create art, because even though political change takes thousands of people, we can each do our parts. At least twice Martha strongly recommended Malka Older, whom I know as the author of what I considered a fairly flawed work of fiction, that mystery set in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Maybe I should look at her earlier works?

I felt reasonably okay today! A bit tired, a bit stuffy – but well enough to walk to the school and back, and no need for napping. I watched the second half of the football game and got through another month of newspapers. I also watched an episode of Cinema Nomad (Ghana) and rewatched an old favorite episode of Boruto: “Love and Potato Chips.” Mostly I did cozy things.

J’s Magic tournament didn’t go well for him or DG, but they’re playing in one tomorrow that they probably care about more. They visited the La Brea tar pits, and they ate in two restaurants, including a fancy vegan one in Hollywood.