Multigenerational Living - Month 3

Of Lawns and Guest Rooms

Month Three finds the Kids and grandkids enjoying the backyard. They really love the backyard, as we have a 1/3 acre size lot. The grandkids have a portion of the yard filled with toys and they play outside whenever possible. The kids also enjoy barbecuing and spending time outside. This month Christian held his 5th birthday party outside on the lawn, where there was much chaos and play. Fun was had by all. The only problem with the kids having almost exclusive use of the yard is that they are responsible for lawn care and there seems to a lack of exuberance for this task.

One downside of multigenerational living is the lack of room for the 4th generation. My wife no longer has a guestroom for her mom and step dad to stay in. When they come to visit they have to make other arrangements.

Despite the downside created by the lack of a guest room . There is a silver lining to this multigenerational living . We do not have to mow the yard, or at least we think we will not have to mow the yard.

What Kinds of Fiction Do I Like

Another blog I follow asked the question “What is your favorite KIND of book?”. I stared to write a reply then realized it would be a very long reply post so I thought I would answer it here and just link my answer as a reply.

I am thriller/mystery/fantasy fan:

Thrillers: These would be works by such authors as Alistair MacLean, Robert Ludlum, Frederick Forsyth, Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, Dan Brown, Michael Crichton (most of his novels do contain some science fiction but I would argue that only the Andromeda Strain and Terminal Man are pure Sci-Fi); James Rollins and Lincoln and Childs.

Mysteries: There are many subgenres of mysteries:

1. Classic Mysteries: Arthur Conan Doyle; Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers; Dashiell Hammett; Raymond Chandler and Harry Kemelman (The Rabbi series) I would argue to include Kemelman in the classics.

2. Straight Mysteries: These are the whodunits that can have police officers (that are not police procedurals) , private eyes, psychologists or even dog mushers as their protagonists: Authors would include: Stieg Larsson (my current favorite author); Dana Stabenow; J.A. Jance ( Some of her early Beaumont books might be considered police procedurals ) Jonathan Kellerman; Sue Henry (Jessie Arnold series) ; Nevada Barr; Robert B Parker; James Patterson ( The Alex Cross and Women’s Murder Club series); and Tony Hillerman ; Ridley Pearson ( Walt Fleming series); Elizabeth Peters; Jeffery Deaver and Janet Evanovich

3. Police Procedurals: I don’t care for the classic police procedural, al la Ed McBain and Joseph Wambaugh. I do like a few of what might be classified as procedural, works by John Sandford (both the Davenport and the Flowers series); Michael Connelly (the Harry Bosch series), Elizabeth George; P. D. James ; Sue Henry (Alex Jensen series) and Linda Fairstein

4. Forensic Science Mysteries: Kathy Reichs; Patricia Cornwell (her early works, the later books are weak) Ridley Pearson (his stand alone works and Lou Boldt series have a lot of forensics in them, though they could be considered police procedurals); and Aaron Elkins (who is writing again!)

5. Cozy Mysteries: This is a harder category to describe – there a number of definitions. Most cozies take place in small towns and usually do not involve a lot of gory details or explicit adult situations. Most of my favorite cozies involve animals these include: Sue Henry (the Maxie and Stretch series); Susan Conant; Donna Andrews and Rita Mae Brown

Fantasy:

Pure Fantasy: Tolkien; Raymond Feist; Robert Jordan ( the first 4 Wheel of Time books for sure, maybe up through 7 then they really begin to drag) ; Weis and Hickman (the Dragon Lance series); Piers Anthony (Xanth series) and Elaine Cunningham (Song of Swords series)

Alternate reality: Kim Harrison; Jim Butcher (Dresden Files series) and Laurell K. Hamilton (her early Anita Blake works – the later ones devolved into soft porn)

Driving & Texting - A Thoughts About Technology Post

Most of us have heard news reports about accidents caused by someone texting while driving. There have been news reports showing how inattentive you are while texting. Far more so than talking on the phone without hands free, eating, or changing a CD. Recently I got to see how a person drives while texting.

I was heading up a major 4 lane street, when I got behind a pickup truck being driven by a young woman who was obviously texting. To say her driving was erratic is a major understatement. Her speed varied from over 40, the speed limit is 35, down to 25. She crossed over the lane lines at least three times while I was following her, once cutting off another car who blared its horn, to no effect. She also drove in the bike lane for quite some time. I said to myself then, that I was glad there were no cyclists using it.

Of course there were no cops around so she got away with it. She endangered numerous lives, looked like an irresponsible jerk and since she got away with it she will most likely do it again. Next time the results could be disastrous. More and more states are passing tough laws against driving while texting or using a cell phone without a hands free device. After watching one idiot drive and text I hope all states pass such laws.

Review - 206 Bones by Kathy Reichs

206 Bones is the latest in the Temperance Brennan series. The book opens with Tempe Brennan realizing, to her shock and horror, that she has been buried alive. Most of the book is devoted to her looking back trying to figure out who buried her. The book is set in Chicago and Montreal with most of the action taking place in Montreal. For those familiar with the series the only major recurrent character is Andrew Ryan, with whom she has had an on again off again romance, which is currently off.

There are two primary mysteries in the book. The first is to find out who is killing elderly women and the second is who and why Brennan has been buried alive. The problem with the book is there is not much of a mystery in either. The hunt for the killer of the women is mostly a police procedural, showcasing Reichs’ knowledge of forensic anthropology. Reichs makes no attempt to create tension or suspense in this plot line.

As for the second mystery, who buried Tempe, the answer will be apparent halfway through the book, as the perpetrators are also some of the most obvious suspects. While that is the sign of a poorly plotted mystery novel, the major flaw is that Tempe is blind to these suspects. Tempe’s blindness is so blatant that I actually found the book a source of irritation. I wanted to yell at her to get a clue.

While I have enjoyed Reichs’ earlier work this book is a mediocre try at best. Further, the inability of Brennan to see who is behind her abduction is so bad it makes reading the book painful at times.

Flexibility and the Cell Phone – The Second Installment on the Thoughts about Technology Series

For those of us who remember a time BCP (Before Cell Phones) the following scenario will be all too familiar. You are scheduled to have lunch with your mother at a certain restaurant today when, at 10 am you get a call from a good friend from college whose flight has been delayed and now she has time to go to lunch with you before her connecting flight leaves. What do you do? You can try to call your mother, but she is at a meeting and you can’t phone her there. You could leave a message on her answering machine, if she has one, in the hopes she checks her messages before she leaves for the restaurant. You can stand her up. You can ask your friend to the same lunch which, while not the optimum solution, is probably the best compromise, unless your friend and mother do not get along. Today, with the ubiquitous nature of cell phones, this scenario would be very unlikely. You could call or text your mom and explain the situation and move your lunch date.

With cell phones saturating our society today many of us may not realize how much flexibility has been added to our lives. We are moving into a stage in communication where business phone numbers will still be tied to physical locations, but phone numbers for individuals will be tied to their very person. A lot of families, ours included, have done away with landlines to our homes, opting for each of us to carry a cell phone.

This ability to almost always reach out and touch someone to make and change plans means that our commitments and schedules are much more fluid than that of our parents. While this is mostly a good thing it can give rise to a lessening the strength of our commitments. If I have a date to do X with someone and something I want to do more comes up it is now so much easier to bag the previous commitment, usually with very little cost in social currency. Of course, if you do this sort of thing often enough the value of your word when making commitments will suffer devaluation.

The ability to always be in contact is also a two edged sword, as many with cell phones or pagers have found out referring to them as electronic leashes. We are now tied much closer to our work and our bosses can more easily pull on that leash. We also have a harder time dodging those certain people in all our lives, be they relatives or acquaintances, that for most part we really don’t want to talk to very often.

Review - The Girl Who Played with Fire By Stieg Larsson

The Girl Who Played with Fire is the second in Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (the first being The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the third will be The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest). While the first book stands on its own, you should really read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo before reading this one. The Girl Who Played with Fire sees the return of Larsson’s two protagonists, Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander.

While Blomkvist plays a large role in the book, the main character is Salander. Millennium is approached by a freelance writer and his partner to do an expose on the sex slave trade in Sweden and name the names of johns, including government officials and police officers. Before the issue can run they both end up dead and evidence at the scene points to Salander as the killer. Salander soon becomes the subject of a nationwide manhunt.

Salander, whose response to someone attacking her with a gun is to get a bigger gun, decides to find out who really killed the journalists. In the process of Salander’s efforts we learn her back-story and toward the end we find out what “All the Evil” is that was hinted at in the first book. We learn why Salander has such distrust of any governmental entity, inclining the police. And why her official government file shows her as a psychotic who is barely literate and a societal outcast, when in fact she is a genius with a photographic memory.

Salander is one of the most complex and fascinating characters I have encountered in mystery fiction. While brilliant, she completely ignores most of societal norms including those of social interaction. In fact some of them appear to be a complete mystery to her. Blomkvist mused in the first book that she might have Asperger syndrome, Salander has too much insight into peoples’ motivations for that to be the case. She also has a very strict moral code that does not match up well with the Swedish legal system. One clear driving force in her life is she hates men that hate women and will seek revenge, or in her mind justice, to redress any woman wronged.

Larsson continues his theme of Swedish society’s hypocritical ambivalence toward violence against and exploitation of women. Further, in revealing Salander’s back-story he criticizes how the Swedish government can fail its citizens by the failure and corruption of those charged with protecting the weakest members of society.

This book was not quite as good as Larsson’s first work, but that may be because it is the second work in a trilogy. Thus, is does not stand alone, it is built on the first work and needs the last to complete the story. The book ends with the revelation of and confrontation with those that are responsible for the murders and “All the Evil” but stops, leaving the fallout of these revelations to the third book. That being said, this is a great book and I am impatiently waiting the English language release of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

Technology and Slogging

A few months ago I was visiting my alma mater, the University of Idaho, and decided to check out what changes had been made at the library. There, in a display as an historical artifact, was a card catalogue. While doing a Google search recently I was reminded of the card catalogue and the fact that a lot of research is no longer a slog. The question is, is this a good thing? How could it not be? Just do a Google or Bing search and presto all the information you need is right there on the net, right? Well there are three problems that come to mind immediately.

There has been a lot written about the first two problems, that of inaccuracy and the flood of information. Most people understand that if you are doing a school paper, citing Scientific American’s website is acceptable, but Uncle Joes Weird Phenomenon blog, not so much. There has also been much written about the flood of information available. So much information is available it can be hard to sort out the relevant from the background noise. However, I have not seen too much written about the third problem, the ease of research as compared to previous methods.

I may be an old fuddy duddy, but there seems to be less slogging needed to do research today, at least for high school and undergraduate research papers. When I was in school you had to actually dig to get the research you needed. In high school, if you were lucky you had an encyclopedia in the home. Even then you still needed to go down to the library and use a card catalogue and The Readers’ Guide to Periodicals. Finding sources for your papers was hard work, it required slogging. So why is lack of slogging in research for high school and undergraduate courses so bad?

Because real research, the kind that relies on the scientific method or use of primary sources can still be a slog. You have to create experiments that meet rigorous requirements or you have to consult primary sources that may be buried in letters and other documents, often written in another language. If you have never had to slog through research to write papers in high school and college, the slog of doing original research may create a bit of a culture shock. Research the “old fashion way” at least helped one prepare for the rigors of doing primary research.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a Luddite, I am not advocating the return of the card catalogue or doing away with computer aided research. I am merely pointing out that one of the good things about research today, the ease at which information is retrieved, has its downside. Maybe there was some benefit to doing research in the days of card catalogues and guides to periodicals. A little slog is good for the soul.

Review - Storm Front (The Dresden Files, Book 1) By Jim Butcher

I watched the SciFi Channel series adaptation of the Dresden Files but did not care for the Harry Dresden character as portrayed on the show. Now, that I have read Storm Front, the first book in the series, I find I like the anti-hero, who is a cross between Merlin and Robert B. Parker’s Spenser. Dresden does not hide the fact he is a wizard from the rest of world. Instead he tries to make a living as just that, a real wizard. This means he is usually broke and in some sort of trouble. He ekes out a living locating lost objects and people and works part time as a paranormal consultant to the Chicago police department
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Dresden is a rather dark figure; with a wicked, yet self deprecating sense of humor; his own sold code of honor; and a dedication to his clients. He lives with a 30 lb cat and Bob, an oversexed, grouchy spirit that lives in a skull. Harry really does know his magic, but is a bit hapless, losing his staff, getting ambushed, having the wrong potion go off at the wrong time.

In the opening book we find Harry, broke as usual, take on case to locate a missing husband and then get called in by Detective Karrin Murphy, of the Chicago PD, on a case where two people have had their hearts explode out of their chests. Murphy wants answers fast. The problem is Harry is under an eidetic called the Sword of Damocles, a sort of probation, from the White Council (the group of wizards who enforce the laws of magic). Morgan, a Warden for the Council suspects him of being the killer. He must prove his innocence to the White Counsel and Murphy who has also begun to suspect him. To complicate matters he must navigate around one of Chicago’s must powerful underworld bosses and find the killer before the White Counsel connives and decides he is guilty. Harry’s problem is the killer is a wizard equal to Harry’s power, if not his skill, and unlike Harry is not bound by the Laws of Magic, and he has Harry lined up to be the next victim.

Storm Front has a real mystery, well plotted with supernatural twist and turns. In the course of his investigation Harry has to deal with vampires, faeries, demons and even giant scorpions. I have become a fan of this series and plan on reading them all.

Multigenerational Living - Month 2

In month two we see that boundaries are being crossed. Things have started to disappear. My wife’s toothpaste and body wash, a bottle of Benadryl, a bottle of moistening crème and the flyswatter. We have found the toothpaste, body wash, Benadryl and flyswatter, all of which were absconded by She Who Lives Upstairs. We are not sure why these items were taken, perhaps she wanted to kill mosquitoes that had freshly brushed proboscis, were freshly washed and properly moisturized.

We have retrieved all of the purloined items except the moistening crème, which She Who Lives Upstairs denies taking. This investigation is ongoing. I am sure the “borrowing” of various personal items is not uncommon in multigenerational living arrangements. However, the trespass to such a number of chattel means we will have to increase our vigilance. So beware She Who Lives Upstairs, we are watching you

Review – Fire and Ice by J.A. Jance

I have liked all of J.A. Jance’s Beaumont series and have come to enjoy her Joanna Brady series as well. Fire and Ice is by far the worst novel she has produced. First, it fails as a mystery because there is none. We know from the start who is behind the murders in Washington State and there are very few details left for the reader to figure out. Further, there is little suspense since the author creates very little tension in the novel.

Secondly, while I like the format of alternating between Beaumont and Brady as they follow their respective leads, the Brady parts of the book are filled with cutout characters and there is little or no development of Joanna herself. Further, the Brady portions of the book seemed to be chocked with filler and even the nursing home sub plot was weak and had very little substance. The Beaumont portions of the book were better. There were some interesting characters, such as Momma Rose and her man Tom. Beaumont’s character did have some more depth and created much more interest in the reader than Joanna Brady did.

However, the weak plot; lack of character development; no real mystery in a mystery book; and padding with throw away characters was not the worst part of the book. The worst part of the book was the ending or should I say a lack thereof. The book just ends with nothing really resolved. The reader is left to assume the bad guys get caught and justice is done. Jance could have at least put in an epilogue wrapping up all the cases, but she just ended the book with no resolutions to the murders in Washington State, the nursing home subplot or the throw away sub plot, the murder at the ATV Park