Pen's Nest

Sable is learning to cat. I'm fairly convinced I saw her crossing the garden with a tiny, hapless mammal in her mouth a few days ago—followed by her re-crossing the garden in pursuit of a small bird. Which I don't think she caught, but, still. Yesterday I saw her pursuing a squirrel at speed. I am somewhat worried about this development, as I doubt she has the skillz to take down a squirrel, and they are vicious little buggers.

She is displeased with us at the moment because she has a small swelling on one ear and we took her to the vet yesterday. Vet scraped some stuff off, and deduced there are harvest mites at work. So today we had to dose her ear, which meant capturing and holding her down. Fluffy was also subjected to this treatment, just in case, but although Fluffy struggles more effectively, she also forgives more readily.

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Went to see the Hobbes and Shaw movie. Didn't like it. Think it is a mistake to establish your main characters as jerks right at the beginning for the sake of cheap laughs, and to cement the characterisation by having them be witlessly and stupidly rude to one another in the face of all common sense for most of the film. Meh.

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My Boy has been having a possible resurgence of his Crohn's. Took him to his appointment at the hospital today, and it was pleasingly efficient, we were only there half an hour. But he has to go back for a colonoscopy.

People with allergies: he described having throat pain/closure feelings when he tried to eat, and it seems to have been a fruit smoothie that caused it. That sounds more like an allergic reaction to me - yes? No?

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I didn't know 'line editing' was a Thing. I thought is was just 'editing'. Actually, since in my experience, beta-reading is usually one or more of the following:
- spelling, grammar, typos + language (eg Brit-picking)
- canon checking, and possibly other facts too
- story doctoring
- poking at style and the details of the writing
...I'd assumed that 'editing' was a combination of story doctoring and poking at details, and 'copy editing' was the typo stuff plus fact checking. Anyway, there's a post on Metafilter about it.

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We went to the men's chorus picnic on Sunday, at which many simple games were played. Welly tossing, quoits, boules, and something involving paper cups on strings being propelled by water pistol. After chorus last night, Beast came home bearing a large bag of mixed miniature sweeties, which was nice! He had—miraculously—achieved the highest score on one of the throwing games.

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I believe this piece has been around for rather a long while, but I found it a fascinating examination of the reason why we need to be careful about the language we use, and the way assumptions are built into language so solidly that we can easily fail to notice they are there. It's called A Person Paper on Purity in Language. Good stuff.

Bun and I spent three hours in an episode of a recent science fiction* show the limbo between junctions 12 and 13 of the M1 this morning. We were going to visit my dad, and had not realised that three lorries and an oil tanker had had an altercation between junctions 13 and 14 in the wee small hours, nor that in consequence the motorway was *closed*.

Sigh.

Happily, Pa seems to be making progress. He took a step a couple of weeks ago. He is improving at standing up. He is to be supplied with a nifty turntable device which should make it possible for him to get out of bed and into a chair without the indignity and anxiety of being subjected to a hoist. This is good stuff.


* good fiction, bad science

This is one of those things that goes around in email, but it seems to me to be worth mentioning.

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke...totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.


RECOGNIZING A STROKE
The "3" steps, STR . Read and Learn!
Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke. Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:


S *Ask the individual to SMILE.
T *Ask the person to TALK . To SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (eg. . . It is sunny out today)
R *Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.
{NOTE: Another 'sign' of a stroke is this: Ask the person to 'stick' out their tongue... If the tongue is 'crooked', if it goes to one side or the other that is also an indication of a stroke} If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call 9-1-1 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this e-mail sends it to 10 people; you can bet that at least one life will be saved. So I'm sending it to you, flist.