Patterns

Generally, I've fallen into this pattern of writing my post before falling asleep. Once and a while, I get a couple of posts ahead and take a night off. However, most nights I'm here writing the blog post. It's started being ingrained as habit, which is a good thing. For example, our sleep cycle has become a little off. To make a long story short, I fell asleep early last night and didn't blog. This habitual writing has become so strong that I started awake at 2:30 AM with the realization that I didn't blog. So here I am at 3 AM. . . blogging.

That's the great side of habits, once set up, all I have to do is give in to the impulse. Of course that's also why bad habits are hard to break. Riding the power of habits, I'm trying to get several more in place:

1. 20 minutes to an hour working outside every afternoon. I've realized that I like outdoor chores but I let them pile up because of how busy we are. Solution? Do a little every day, bring Thomas with me. He toddles around while I pick at some small task, there are plenty of them after all. I tried it last week and it worked well for a few days. Now I just need to extend that. Rainy afternoons I figure I can do work in the basement.
2. Writing session in the mornings. 20 or 30 minutes to start, I think Now that I've established a good evening routine, it's time to add fiction writing into the mix. The blog has been great for establishing a daily writing routine, but ultimately there is other writing I want to do, and it's time to work on it.
3. A bedtime routine for Thomas, and therefore, for the rest of us too. Since Thomas was born, and before that really if I'm being honest, we've fallen into a rather indolent evening routine of eating and collapsing into the couch when we get home from teaching. We spend the whole evening zoned out on the tv/internet. Well, that really should change. It's largely accountable for why our weekends get so slammed which just compounds the tired/busy-ness problem. The problem is, I'm not quite sure what this one should look like. I'm thinking

• Food at the table
•  30 minutes to an hour of family reading time (Ryan and I can alternate who reads to Thomas and who gets personal reading)
• Play time
• Brush the Thomas teeth
• Thomas's bath
• Clutter pick up
• Then evening Thomas movie
• Then when he falls asleep we move him to the bedroom. The goal is to get him to bed down there, but he hasn't associated the room with sleep yet.

There's more I'd like to change, of course, but I feel like this is enough to take on for now. The challenge is that to establish a habit it takes several weeks to months of being rigid about the pattern until the habit establishes. As mentioned before, habits are hard to change. If we are creating new habits that invariably means breaking old ones. It'll take time and we'll probably have some false starts, but I think we can do this.

Erak's Ransom by John Flanagan

I topped out on this series last month and had a hard time getting into this one. There was nothing wrong with the series or the book, but after reading 6 books in the series, I got a little burned out. This happens to my kids too. They get very all or nothing about it and assume that difficulty getting hooked means that they no longer like the series. In my experience, enjoying a book often has as much to do with one's mood as it does with the content of the book itself. Waiting a day or a week often does wonders. So I gave the series a rest for a couple of weeks and voila, I reacquired interest.

In my previous post about this series, I complained that book 6 skips right over the end of Will's apprenticeship. Erak's Ransom, book 7, goes back to that time and fills in the gap. A lot of things change in book 7. Halt, the confirmed bachelor, gets married for one thing. Erak goes back to raiding. Cassandra/Evelyn starts to assert her independence more as the solitary heir to the throne. I was a little concerned about what would happen with Cassandra actually. After the events in books 2 to 4, I couldn't imagine her simply retreating back into the castle.

Flanagan introduces a new culture with the Arridi who are loosely based off of an Arab or Persian culture. Erak get's caught while raiding and the Arridi hold him for ransom. So when Svengal, Erak's friend and second mate, crashes Halt's wedding, Will, Horace, and Halt quickly find themselves on a rescue mission. It occurs to me that for rangers, who are sworn to protect and watch over the people of their country, they spend an awful lot of time outside their country. In any case, things don't go according to plan (they never do really) and things get complicated fast.

As a book that is in that transitional place for the main character Will going from student to adult, Flanagan does a really good job. Much better than other series in fact. (Book 5 of Harry Potter, for example) While there are a couple of angsty moments, Flanagan doesn't dwell on them and the plot keeps moving. It's hard to write a good transitional book and those transitions are critical for a long series. When bungled, it's easy to put the series down and never pick it back up. However, without these transitions, the characters get stale and trapped in roles that never change. When the series in question features a kid as the main character, the kid literally never grows up without those key transitions. I'm glad Flanagan, and Will, jumped the hurdle well.

A Spring Potage

I've always been a fan of the transitional months. I really like Spring and Fall. Summer is too hot and Winter gets boring. However, let's face it, I really like the food in the spring and fall. Sometimes I get impatient. This soup is born of this impatience. For environmental reasons, I should probably be leery of asparagus from Peru, but living in the south I'm just not sure if I can grow my own. In any case, here's the recipe.

1 Tbs olive oil
2 onions chopped
3-4 white potatoes diced
4 cups green peas, frozen is fine
2 bunches asparagus, tips separated and woody ends trimmed. Dispose/compost woody ends
salt and pepper to taste

saute onion in oil. Add potatoes and peas. When potatoes soften and peas thaw add water to cover and non-tip/non-woody asparagus bits. Bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 10 minutes

Puree with a stick blender....this does not need to be perfect. Dump in asparagus tips. Heat through. If you have an electric stove, you can turn off the burner and rely on residual heat. If you have gas, you'll need to monitor it on low.

Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Once Upon a More Enlightened Time by James Finn Garner

Sometimes I read something, then I immediately get embarrassed that I read it. I feel weird about including it on my book tally. In this case, it's because it's just so darn short. 84 pages, to be exact. Content-wise, it's not exactly brain bending either.

However, it's fun. Fairy tales tend to have an old and almost antique world view. Political correctness is  a ridiculous language movement catering to a group of people who spend too much time sanitizing their idea delivery systems. Mix the two things together and you get this short little volume.

It's cute.

Lydia and the terrible very bad no good literature-less day

I'm 23 books ahead on my pacing for 100 book goal for 2016. So, I took a day off. I have a backlog of grading and some other things to focus on. Reading takes a lot of time, let's work on the back log, it'll be a good productive day.  Here's how it went:

3:30 AM woke up ahead of alarm, reached for book on side table. There was no book. Oh yeah, I'm taking a break. Let's go back to sleep.

3:50 AM ahhhhhhhh! can't sleep. There is a bug on the window. Reach for book to distract....there is no book. *sad face*

4:00 AM Alarm goes off. Hit snooze. Turn on T.V. In the absence of lit I'm going to watch anime, no judging!

4:20 AM eat breakfast, start setting up family lunches.

6:00 AM load up car. Stare forlornly at stack of books left behind on coffee table.

6:05 AM after dropping off Thomas, we are back in the car to head into work. I reach for the book light, but then I remember, oh yeah. . . no book.

6:25 AM I buy a very large cup of starbucks coffee to fill the book shaped void in my soul

7:00 AM the coffee didn't work, void unfilled. I distract myself with student concerns i.e. my 5 inch stack of grading

7:50 AM surely there must be something to read, I'm an English teacher for gods sake

8:00 AM stay strong Lydia, essays! I must grade essays!

8:45 AM ohmygodwhycan'tanyonewriteanoutline where's my book, I need a book! God give me anything, I'll even read Milton.

8:50 AM clean room, turns out throwing a tantrum is ill advised as an adult. *sad face*

9:05-12:25 AM teach student to write outlines. . . damnit.

12:30-1:05 lunch. . . without a book. meh.

1:10 Guitar class. You know there aren't too many books that feature guitars in the grand scheme of things. Maybe there should be more. I bet there's a market there.

3:00 end of class. Tutor students. . . on outlining. Surely there must be a book here somewhere.

4:00 PM evening commute. . . without a book. What a lame English teacher I am.

6:00 PM dinner. Organize books for tomorrow.

6:20 PM reorganize books. I wonder how many I can read in a day. I have sub days left.

6:30 PM write blog post about missing books.

I have a serious problem.

Lesson learned. . . always have a book. . . or three.

Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

okay.

so.

It's not really sci-fi.

It's really not. It's an adventure story set on Mars. It's a really fun, really readable adventure story, but it's still just an adventure story. This series strongly reminds me of King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard which really has as much to do with Africa as Burroughs's book has to do with Mars. I guess it doesn't really matter. It's just a backdrop, but don't go in expecting sci-fi.

Read as a classic adventure story, Gods of Mars is a fun book. In this second novel in the Barsoom Series, John Carter finds himself back on Mars but in the fabled land of the dead, the valley of Dor, leagues away from his beloved princess and son. He quickly learns that the cherished beliefs of the various races of Mars are a load of hokum and that their superstitions cover a more sinister truth.

Hilarity ensues. Hilarity and fighting. Actually a lot of fighting. Quite a lot.

It's a formula, of course. Now that I've read two of the books, the pattern seems pretty consistent. The formula goes like this:

• Carter finds himself somewhere lost
• He gets in a fight
• He makes a friend
• He and his friend are captured
• He escapes 
• He and his friend run and are separated
• He is captured. Friend possibly dead.
• He escapes.
• Seeks revenge for friend.
• He is captured
• He escapes
• Joyus day, friend is alive, but captured
• He rescues friend
• They run
• they are captured.

Blenderize and repeat as needed until book length, then find a way to end on a cliff hanger.

It's still fun, but I can't read more than one in a row.

God *slam* Damn *bang* Staff *bash* Meeting *headslamdesk*

I know how it happens. We live in an increasingly high-tech and distancing world. We are alienated from each other and stressed out. Managers are tasked with increasing employee moral. The staff, for their part, are so busy that they barely have time to talk to each other let alone managment.

Staff meetings sound like a good idea.

It's a time when members of your staff sit in convivial receptivity. In this atmosphere of good-will and productive interest in the greater good, one can air frustration and seek positive resolution. In the end, problems are solved. Problems like world peace, an end to world hunger, and an efficient solution to the crisis in the middle east. In the end, the employees leave with a glow in their hearts for their management teams. A chorus of angels sing out at the righteousness of the world. The lambs lay down with the lions and all is right in the world. Right?

Right?

Of course not. The reason why not? People like to bitch. People working in stressful jobs need to relieve pressure and it's the rare person who does that positively. In my experience a group can't do it at all. So people vent, often past the point where the venting is constructive, and often end up just bitching for an hour.

It's not that staff meetings are useless. Occasionally, they are very productive, but I think there is an inverse correlation between the amount of staff stress and the productivity of a staff meeting. I find the vent-meetings frustrating. I'm not saying that I always deal with my stress positively because I don't, but sitting around wasting an hour listening to people go on long winded tirades just wears down my reserves. And on those days when I actually let myself get sucked into the endless windging myself, I just end up feeling angry and anxious.

Today was a double length joint staff meeting. Double Trouble.

The staff is very stressed out.

Feh.