When not to go in for radiation

Yesterday when I went in for zappy, there was a bit of oddness: the usual finagling of placing me just right on the couch and such took longer and had a false start. Tech Ashley told me that the couch setting was supposed to be 185, only the system kept waffling between 186 and 184.(random number), presumably until she whacked it in the head and got it stabilized. They were still able to successfully zap me last night.

Which is an interesting thing to remember in conjunction with how Tech Chris called my cell this afternoon with the news that their machines were on the fritz, and they were contacting all the people who had afternoon appointments lined up. He wanted to touch bases with me especially, he said, because he knew I took the bus to get over there and didn't want me to take the bus all the way there for nothing.

"Okay," I said, since it was around 3pm by then and I've been leaving work around 10 to 4, "is there an ETA on when they'll be back online?"

No, said Tech Chris. It could be two minutes, it could be hours.

"Okay," I said, "let's just cancel tonight and I'll see you all tomorrow evening."

Because, yeah, if the machines which are shooting radiation at me are broken, I'll stand way over here until you guys get those fixed. Yep. Way, way over here.

Meanwhile, books!

Since I didn't have to go to radiation treatment tonight, I did what any self-respecting raving bibliophile would do, and went straight to the bookstore on my way home.

I've been keeping an eye out for blue_succubus's sequel to Succubus Blues, but even though the release date was early December, no sign of it yet. I've also been looking around for Suzanne Arruda's Mark of the Lion, since I inadvertently picked up the second book that goes with that and I'd prefer to read the first one first.

I found neither. But I did pick up Deanna Raybourn's Silent in the Grave.

And, much to my pleasure, desperance's Bridge of Dreams. desperance, I've been keeping an eye out for books of yours over here for a while now since I was curious, and was very pleased to finally find one!

Forthcoming on the reading queue: Laura Joh Rowland's Shinju, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife (since a coworker has loaned me a copy and I really need to get it back to her before her contract ends and she goes back to Pakistan)... and, yes, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I'm still going to read it, folks, honest! I just need to have my brain back long enough to be able to read on the weekends.

And I've been covetously eying the latest Julie Czerneda hardback, Reap the Wild Wind, wondering if she has yet moved into the realm of authors for whom I'd be willing to dish out hardback dollars. She and jimbutcher are about the only ones for whom I'd consider it, at this point, but!

Kristen Britain's The High King's Tomb is also tempting me, but less because she's on the list of authors I'd be willing to buy in hardback and more because I am that anxious about the ending of First Rider's Call that I really want to know if she fixed things in Book Three. I'm almost scared to look. ;)

Jam Report #66: 12/30/07

As per last night's promise, here's a very quick Jam Report post just to talk at least in passing about our last Jam, which was on the 30th.

And minimal, since I was very low on brain and since we were also short sutures1. technoshaman and cflute did make it, though (and are Heroes of the Revolution for bringing pie when it wasn't their turn), and so we pretty much kept it mostly instrumental.

Of course, this has been standard procedure for all of the recent Jams at the Murk, but this time it was even more so since I had pretty much no brain for much in the way of song selection. I therefore let Callie and Dara drive what we were doing.

Dara played through updated versions of the pieces she's been working on and handed out updated copies as well, to reflect her various notational changes. We touched briefly on the Heather Alexander triad of instrumentals we've been playing with as well, but ugh, that was difficult to do for me. D minor is hard for me to play even when I'm up to speed, and when my brain is mush, well.

We also touched briefly on "Trois Navires de Ble", but this time we did it in A just to see if I could sing it in that key and whether Dara liked it better for flute playing purposes. She did. I think we'll keep it there. She's still giving me dirty looks about changing keys on "Mari-Mac", though. ;)

We decided to do another three-week interval as well, to account for Rustycon being this weekend and Conflikt coming up too. (I am dubious about my ability to make it to either, but Dara may show!) So this means that our next Jam is going to be the 20th! There are rumblings as well about Glenn and Callie hosting this time, so as to allow ouisel to join us, but we'll see if that is definite as we get closer to the time.

The pie was chocolate cream and very tasty. But next time it'll be our turn to provide the pie.