Reading SF

I grew up loving SF books. My mother is a reader, and so am I. The first important book in my life was Mrs. Frisby at the Rats of NIMH. I spent much of my adolescence reading. I devoured mysteries, SF, and the classics. By high school, I started to focus on just reading SF. It was what most of my friends were reading. I read the SF classics, horror, and any epic fantasy series that were recommended to me. I read Tolkien, Eddings, Feist, Lackey, Brooks, Williams, and King. I poured through their series.

Then I burned out.

It’s not that I stopped reading, but I moved on to different things. I read more of the literary “canon.” I read more mysteries, and I read a whole bunch of Doctor Who novels. I also read an awful lot of comics.

Thanks to Lynne’s job at NIU, I have recently been dragged to a bunch of SF conventions. Lynne did not grow up as an SF reader, so I was basically there to help her speak geek. The problem I had, though, was that I had been out of the SF literary game for quite a while. I didn’t feel nearly well read enough to be helpful. There were all of these new authors I hadn’t heard of and older authors that I never got around to reading.

After Odyssey Con last April, I made a decision to rectify this. I have started a quest to read as many SF books as possible while focusing both on the classics and on the books by all of these wonderful authors that we were meeting.

It has been a gas. I have missed so many good things. Since many other people use their blogs for their personal reading challenges, I’ve decided to start listing everything I’ve read since Odyssey Con (April 13-15).

1- Way of the Wolf- E. E. Knight
2- Choice of the Cat- E. E. Knight
3- Tale of the Thunderbolt- E. E. Knight
4- Valentine’s Rising- E. E. Knight
5- Polaris- Jack McDevitt
6- Seeker- Jack McDevitt
7- The Curse of Chalion- Lois McMaster Bujold
8- Paladin of Souls- Lois McMaster Bujold
9- Melusine- Sarah Monette
10- Gateway- Fred Pohl
11- Ringworld- Larry Niven
12- Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom- Cory Doctorow
13- American Gods- Neil Gaiman

I’m still deciding about what to read next.

Coming this September, Lynne and I will also start to read the selections for DeKalb Public Library’s SF reader’s group. Our good friend Steve runs it, and we’re pretty excited by his selections.

I’m glad to be back.

Ripper

Good news, everybody!

Joss, our television master, announced at Comic-Con that Tony Head’s Ripper spin-off is back on at the BBC.

http://www.tvsquad.com/2007/07/28/comic-con-joss-whedon-panel-report/

It’s about time. After Torchwood’s success, this is the biggest no brainier. It will only be a 90-minute special, but I would not be surprised if it ends up being a series of such movies. The big question now is how will it end up in the U.S.? I’m pulling for it to be on Masterpiece Theater.

Lynne's Blog

My amazing, kooky, copycat wife now has her own blog.

http://rarelylynne.livejournal.com/

Old Friends, New Friends

We’ve been active the last couple of days. On Thursday, we attended our friend Mary’s retirement party at the library. It was very bittersweet. Mary and her husband Charles have been wonderful friends, and Mary has been an important mentor to Lynne. They also adored Caitlin. We will greatly miss them.

The party went well and Caitlin became quick friends with their granddaughter, Maggie. They had a fun time playing in the stacks together.

Yesterday was also active. We traveled out to Naperville to have an enjoyable lunch with our new friends Eric and Chats. We only found out today that they had taken time out of their anniversary celebration day to have lunch with us. That was super sweet of them. They are both extremely cool people, and we’re happy that we’re getting to know them better.

Since we were in Naperville, we took Caitlin to do some kid’s things. We went to an amazing adapted playground at the Riverwalk. Caitlin was able to swing and use a special slide that was a series of rollers like the ramps used for box distribution. Caitlin was laughing and giddy. I really hope that one day we will get a playground that nice in DeKalb.

We followed that up be taking her to the DuPage Children’s Museum. She played with lights, water, and a 100,000 other over-stimulating things. We had a fine time.

Last night was a laid-back time with our temporarily spouseless friends Jennifer and Steve. We sat at the Borders cafe and played board and card games.

Otherwise, Caitlin’s epilepsy has been under better control. Two of the last four days were even seizure free.

Keep on blogging...

It has been a quiet week. Almost too quiet...

Behind you!!!

Ha! There is nothing behind you. I have fooled you with my clever jape.

This has been a week of writing accomplishments for the family. Lynne finished writing another article about cross-dressing women in Dime Novels (based on a paper she gave at the PCA conference a few months back). She’s giddy to have it completed.

I personally completed 10,000 words on my super-vague, personal project. This is a tremendous accomplishment for me, but I am nowhere near finished. I think that I am doing some of my best work.

I am also now 79% complete with my task for the super-secret, unannounced Mad Norwegian Press project. I can taste the finish line.

Caitlin is fine. Her epilepsy is all over the place. One day she has three seizures; the next day she is seizure free. We just have to ride it until she stabilizes into a pattern. Otherwise, she has been bright and happy. We are now unfortunately in between assistive tech devices. The next one should be on its way soon.

I should also have some major announcements coming soon for the Aicardi Syndrome conference. Things are starting to really move along.

Red

Today was another day of projects. We were able to paint the shutters and garage. It looks better than we expected. What made it possible was help from our wonderful friends Sarah and David. David was outside with us painting while Sarah stayed inside watching Caitlin. Caitlin and Sarah adore each other, and they are hilarious together. After painting, we all had dinner with or friend Kevin and his little daughter Kiera. The night was completed with some Blake’s 7. We are tired, but we were able to complete everything on our weekend list.

Busy Day...

The weekend is already half over, and it has been nice and productive. Caitlin had a nice day today with only a small seizure. I was able to hide at Panera and get more work done. I am really rolling on my projects. I was also able to make some progress on the hotel situation for the Aicardi Syndrome Family Conference. Lynne did some gardening, so we all feel fairly virtuous.

We had a very lovely dinner tonight with our friends Mary and Charles. Mary is retiring in the next couple of weeks, and they will be moving back to Georgia in order to be with their family. It is one of the things that we hate most about the academic lifestyle. We are always moving or having other close friends move. The only plus is that we have friends all over the country.

Good Day...

That was much better. Caitlin had no seizures today. She was active and chipper. She also had a nice session with her speech therapist and Lynne as they played Uno and adapted Hungry, Hungry Hippos (I was upstairs working).

Caitlin was especially happy to see her best friend Lily. They are always sweet together. They played My Little Pony and watched Snow White while the adults played Dungeons and Dragons. It was a good day.

Otherwise, things are fairly quiet. It seems that Sunday we will be painting the shutters on our house.

Bad Day...

**Sigh**

Today was a bad seizure day for Caitlin. Though none of them needed Diastat, she had three seizures today. All of the increases in medication seem to be doing nothing. If anything, Caitlin’s epilepsy is getting worse. We’re in this bad cycle where Caitlin has a seizure every time she wakes up. The seizures make her tired so she can’t stay awake. She has a nap and then wakes up in another seizure.

On the plus side, Caitlin had a good physical therapy session today. Her PT was very happy with her strength, especially with the assisted walking. Caitlin is also starting to use the parallel bars when she’s standing.

Otherwise, I was able to keep chugging on my projects, and even get some filing done. We met Lynne at work and got to see her use a replica 18th century common press to do some printing for a Friends of the NIU Library event.

Mostly I just wish that I could fix my little girl...

My Daughter, The Card

Caitlin thinks that she’s pretty funny. Today was the day that we saw her OT who had recently stopped doing aquatic therapy with Caitlin. This was also the day that we brought Caitlin’s loaner Dynavox with us to let her communicate.

So what does my daughter say when asked about what she wants to do during our session? Swim. In fact, she demanded it twice. She made her OT squirm with guilt. It amused her.

But that was not her greatest source of amusement. Caitlin had not peed since 6 AM. I saw it coming, but there wasn’t much I could do. Caitlin got into the canvas swing and was laughing and babbling about her Hello Kitty shoe charms, and then she got awfully quiet. She soaked her pants, her shirt and the swing. That really cracked her up. Luckily, I was smart and brought a change of pants. Unluckily, I was an idiot and didn’t bring a change of shirt. After some scrambling, they were able to find a t-shirt. Caitlin was this close to going home in a child’s postal uniform used for dress-up.

Other than that, she had a pretty good day.

Hooray!

Hooray! I finished a segment of something that I’m working on that I don’t want to talk about so I’ll just vaguely blog about it instead! I am very pleased that I am finally developing the work ethic and technique to accomplish this. The project may end up not being any good, but at least I’m actually trying.

In other vague accomplishments, I am now over 70% done with my assignment for the unnamed Mad Norwegian Press project that I am working on for my friend, Lars Pearson. It was a little frustrating working on it yesterday as some things that I needed to look at were inaccessible.

Caitlin had a better day yesterday. She had fun seeing friends at Borders last night, and she was even perky by bedtime. Today is our trip to see her occupational therapist at Easter Seals in Elgin. Hopefully, it will not be storming as we travel the rural roads of DeKalb and Kane counties. I always find it unnerving to make the drive, as there are crosses at nearly every intersection marking the fatal accidents.

The Keeper of Traken

Things I Learned from The Keeper of Traken Commentary:

1- Matthew Waterhouse is still a tit.
2- Johnny Byrne has no perspective about his writing abilities. This is especially compounded by the fact that he is the one human being other than JN-T and Gary Downie who thought that The Doctor Who Cookbook was a clever idea. What kind of gin-soaked reasoning makes you think that a dish called Kipper of Traken is the height of sophisticated humor? I am starting to understand what went wrong with Arc of Infinity.
3- Sarah Sutton would rather be anywhere else, but there’s really no place else to go. Suddenly it all becomes clear on how Bill Baggs and Paul Ebbs were able to record her in bed for a BBV audio.
4- Anthony Ainley makes people very uncomfortable.
5- Anagrams are rarely funny.
6- Matthew Waterhouse is still a tit.

Rain

Ah...the sweet innocence of childhood is as dead as spats. I loved thunderstorms when I was growing up. They were romantic and mysterious. Thunder started Mystery on PBS. It appealed to the gothic sensibilities of my youth.

Now I am a homeowner. The thing about water is that it is a primary agent of entropy. It is trying to destroy my house. It’s not getting in yet, but I worry about my aging gutters. We had big problems with them over the winter. They are getting replaced, but I’m not sure when. I need to make some follow-up calls today.

Caitlin is still asleep. That is not surprising after last night. She will be pretty wiped for the rest of today.

Note to Self

Note to self: never blog about your epileptic daughter getting better. Well that sucked. We just had to Diastat Caitlin. The meds just aren’t working. Hopefully, things will improve in the next few days.

Caitlin Is Getting Better

Caitlin seems to be doing better. Her epilepsy was getting scary last week. One night we had to Diastat after a seizure went ten minutes. A couple of days later she had two that both went about 8 minutes. She was turning into a twitchy zombie. Luckily, we were in touch with her Pediatric Epileptologist who raised her Vigabatrin. Caitlin has some great doctors at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago. So far, so good.

She is right now singing and playing while watching the Cubs game with me. Lynne should be back from yoga at any moment.

I Am a Big Geek

I have started to blog. Finally, at least three other sad acquaintances will get updates from my life; updates that I probably gave them over dinner a couple of days ago.

This has been a week of recovery for Lynne, Caitlin, and me. Last weekend, we were at CONvergence in the Twin Cities. It was an amazing convention. Lynne was able to make some strides for the library, and we had a great time in the process. It was nice to see some old friends and to make a bunch of new ones. All of our panels went very well with an amazing cross-section of fandom showing up. We can’t wait until next year.

One of the neatest things for me was that it was held at the same hotel as my first convention. It was kind of neat to see how far I’ve come in Geek Culture. I really didn’t know a soul at my first convention. At this one I had my beautiful wife with me, I knew loads of friends, I was on five panels, and we had opportunities to spend time with some significant people in science fiction.

After we got back, I started to compile a list of all of the SF-related conventions and events that I’ve ever attended.

I am a big geek.

There’s no hiding it.

Conventions:
Minicon 28- 1993

Chicago Comicon- 1995
Chicago Comicon- 1996
Wizard World Chicago- 1997
Wizard World Chicago- 1998
Wizard World Chicago- 2004
Wizard World Chicago- 2005

Visions 1996
Visions 1997
Visions 1998

United Fan Con- 1999
United Fan Con- 2000
United Fan Con- 2001
United Fan Con- 2003

Creation Xena/Hercules New York City- 2000
Creation Xena/Hercules New York City- 2001
Creation Philadelphia- 2001

Chicago TARDIS 2000
Chicago TARDIS 2001
Chicago TARDIS 2004
Chicago TARDIS 2005
Chicago TARDIS 2006

WindyCon 31- 2004
WindyCon 33- 2006

Odyssey Con 7- 2007

CONvergence 2007

Gen Con Indy 2004
Gen Con Indy 2005

Signings and Readings:
Peter Gross
Jill Thompson and Brian Azzarello
Douglas Adams
Ray Bradbury
Peter Davison
Terry Brooks
Bruce Campbell
E. E. Knight

It has been a strange and wonderful life...