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Apparently that fall I took a few weeks ago, when I tripped on the sidewalk, did more damage than I thought. I seem to have wrenched my right hip, and that's put a definite crimp in getting my exercise program going again. I can now manage as much as ten minutes on the treadmill without too much pain, but… That's if I'm very careful.

I have discovered, oddly enough, that it hurts less to walk quickly than to walk slowly. There's enough of a difference in the gait that different parts of the joint get stressed. Walking slowly (less than 2 miles per hour) pulls and pinches around the tailbone while going quickly (more than 2.5 miles per hour) stresses the connective tissue on the outside of the joint. A speed between the extremes, unfortunately, annoys both spots. I've not yet found a way to ice all of it at once.

My physical therapist has recommended that I try walking backwards on the treadmill with it at a fairly steep angle as an extra workout to stretch my thighs. I got the impression that it was more a case of him just having found out that it works than a case of really thinking that I need it. He gets that way some times. He also showed me the clinic's latest piece of exercise equipment. It's intended for arm exercise that won't strain the shoulders and is called "The Joystick" (says so right on it! He told me that there'd been a flap from purchasing because $1200 seemed excessive to the bureaucrats for a joystick). It's a platform with a pole sticking out of it. You're supposed to push and pull on the pole while standing on the platform and move it back and forth and in circles and figure eights. The set up adjusts resistance according to the force exerted on the pole. I can see how it would be useful, but I doubt I'll ever invest in anything of the sort.

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I've now confirmed that I can still check out books from the University library system. I'd hoped that I could but wasn't sure since I'm only technically still an employee. I'm still on the libraryallstaff e-mail list, and the supervisor of circulation at the main library sent out a message about some closure or staffing shortage, and I sent her a message asking about my status. She tells me I'm still in the system as a valid patron, so… I just have to get myself over there and check out the books I need. This will mean that I can get LunarGeography to help out with the reading and research without trying to get both of us to the library at a time when we've got a few hours to spare.

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Scott's mother and sister have both nagged me a bit about my birthday wishlist, and I finally sent one out to them. I put down gift certificates first, and I kind of hope I get them. There's something very nice about opening a package, but… I like picking things out myself. That and most of the gift certificates I asked for will force me to make some decisions. For example, I'd like to see if I can crochet (have to learn first!) rugs for the basement. That will require selecting yarn color and texture and looking at backings and patterns (and getting my husband's input! I'll offer him a deal-- If he selects the new refrigerator without dragging me all over town, I'll deal with the rug materials without asking him to judge between six almost indistinguishable shades of blue). I'll have to plan it out and do some work before I start stitching. As another example, we've got a spare bed with a single set of sheets (both bed and sheets were given to us by my in-laws); I want to get a nice blanket and pillows for it.

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Last Sunday, Dorothy hosted another craft get together. This time, LunarGeography attended, and we dragged Matt along. He wanted to learn to crochet anyway and thought it would be funny to walk in with his tarot deck and say, "Oh, you meant "craft" with a small c." He did in fact do that, and half the people present got the joke while the others were politely bewildered. He did some readings toward the end of the gathering, including a demonstration of a layout I'd not previously encountered.

I mostly use a reflected Celtic cross while Matt usually uses the basic Celtic cross (which he calls "cross and circle" or something like that). The layout Matt showed me was a four level pyramid starting with a single card for the situation, going to two cards for the options with three cards for ways of pursuing those options and four cards as possible outcomes. One reads by tracing paths through the layers. I'll have to play with it a bit to see if I can master it.

Matt and I discussed possibly getting together to talk tarot at some point. He knows a lot more than I do about the symbolism because he reads by using the visual cues on the cards. I, on the other hand, simply have meanings stuck in my head that I can pull out when the card comes up. Each of us envies the other a bit. I envy him because he can read with any deck by finding meanings that actually fit the cards (while the meanings I know only fit Rider-Waite derivatives), and he envies me because he thinks knowing the meanings the way I do makes a more intuitive reading possible. I suppose we're both right…

One of the women at the craft gathering had never had a tarot reading or seen one done, so Matt explained what he was doing to her and why. I stuck in an occasional comment myself on such subjects as significators and the unifying aspects of suits or common threads by number. (For those not familiar with tarot, a significator is a card used as a centerpiece or set aside during a reading to represent the person the reading's about. There are four suits of cards (the labels vary from deck to deck), and each tends to focus around certain types of things such as politics or change. Each suit has 14 cards, ace through 10, Page, Knight, Queen and King. Aces, for example, always represent beginnings. Twos are always some form of balance.)

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It's looking like there may be major changes coming in the two campaigns I run on Saturdays. I'm losing players from both, and one of them has a scheduling problem that should have been easily fixed but seems to be causing more trouble than I expected.

I can't say that the problems with the Amber game are unexpected. I was afraid when I accepted the couple that a breakup would cause problems. I knew, however, that the woman wasn't very interested in the game, so I expected that the resulting difficulties would be small. What I didn't expect was that the relationship would end due in part to mental illness (severe depression and anxiety, I believe. I haven't asked for details, and he hasn't offered) on the guy's part. He's unemployed and unemployable and has nowhere to live but her apartment. He wants to continue to play as long as he still has a place to live locally (I have the impression that he's estranged from his family, so it's not like he has any place to go). She hasn't kicked him out and isn't yet threatening to do so, but…

I feel bad not offering assistance, but I don't know him all that well. We had mutual acquaintances as undergraduates, and he found out about the game through a comment I made on the Amber e-list rather than because I mentioned it to him specifically. I just don't see that I can offer what he needs.

Anyway, Lisa's departure (which she says might just be temporary, but I'll be really startled if she ever comes back) combined with Justin leaves me with four players. I might lose one more if Lisa can't handle living with him any more, and then there's the scheduling problem.

Every summer, Scott's job kicks into high gear, and they start requiring overtime. If this summer's like last, he'll be working six day weeks and alternating which weekend day he works or has off. Sadly, he's scheduled to work the Saturdays that he would normally be running his Traveller game. This isn't a big problem. We can swap easily enough; I'll just be running two games on those Saturdays until fall.

But Matt won't play in the Amber game if it's not on the same weekends as his Vampire campaign. I suggested that we switch weekends for that as well; it would even be a good solution for me so that I don't end up trying to GM 8-10 hours in one day. I don't know yet if he'll take me up on that or if he'll just drop out. I had to tell him that while I understood his reasoning (wanting some Saturdays commitment free) quite frankly adapting to my husband's needs and desires was more important to me than adapting to Matt's. Matt has a tendency to go into a snit without much provocation, and talking to him while he's like that is useless. Past experience suggests that he'll become more reasonable in a day or two. If he doesn't, I'll just run without him.

The evening GURPS game has two problems also. The first is that I'm losing two players this summer. Justin has played his last session already, and Tony could disappear at any time. He and Michelle have to be in Philadelphia in August; they're just waiting to move until he finds a job. The other problem is that the campaign is old. There's a lot of history, a lot of weight to the story and characters.

I think that should settle fairly easily. I asked the four players who'll be staying around what they'd like to do. Three of the four (the exception being my husband) said they're interested in a new campaign. We didn't get very specific about what we'll try, but I threw a couple of ideas out there. Lewis mentioned that a couple of his fellow residents are looking for games to join, so if I want another player or two, I can probably find people.

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LunarGeography has mentioned that she's got another friend who might be interested in the Amber game and who I might like generally. We were supposed to meet yesterday, but LunarGeography's car is having a lot of trouble. She's trying to drive it as little as possible, so the meeting's been put off until that problem's been solved. She's afraid that the car may no longer be worth repairing which would leave her and her husband without a car entirely; I suspect it also means that they'll only be replacing one of the vehicles.

The car trouble's even more annoying because I know she spent about $250 last week getting the car "fixed." I went with her to the dealership, and we chatted while we waited. The repairs took much longer than had been predicted. We're not sure by how much, however, because as it turns out the car had been done for quite some time before we found out that it was. They had a waiting area with comfortable chairs and a tv (with no means of changing the channel). We sat through two soap operas and Oprah. I knitted while LunarGeography crocheted until she ran out of yarn. At that point, she kind of got cornered (figuratively) in a conversation with an older man who seemed to be trying to impress us with how much money he had, how liberal he was, etc. He reminded me enough of my father in how he spoke that I did my best to avoid listening (the fact that he seemed to want an audience rather than an interactive conversation didn't help either).

I was a little startled by the realization that I'm in the target demographic for Saturn dealerships. The background music they played while we were there was so very early eighties; I think I recognized every song. Nostalgia thick enough to choke on.

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I've been doing a bit more reading recently. A lot of it has been online, fanfic of various sorts. Very little of that has made enough of an impression on me for me to recall titles or authors. It still kind of sucks me in because I keep telling myself that it's all too short to really matter. Just one more, even if it's not all that good…

David Weber's The Excalibur Alternative was a disappointment. I'd been afraid that it would be when I read the sample chapters on the Baen website a few months ago and so had not bothered to pick it up. Then the Science Fiction Book Club had a buy one get one free sale. The Excalibur Alternative was one of the few that Scott and I both were somewhat interested in, so we bought it.

I think the book contains the seed of a fascinating idea, but half of the book reads like a preface to the real story and the other half like an epilogue. The parts that intrigue me simply aren't there. Basically, a bunch of medieval English knights and archers on their way to France get kidnapped by aliens and forced to fight wars on alien planets. They keep searching for a way to escape and (big surprise!) finally find it. There are no surprises; at least, I didn't find any. The characters don't really seem to grow unless you count the Englishmen figuring out how to exploit technology.

Lois McMaster Bujold's Diplomatic Immunity was a lot more fun. The characters didn't grow at all there, either, but the plot moved along without any hitches. I found it quite a ride. Bujold has an ear for dialog, both external and internal, that never fails. I wouldn't rank Diplomatic Immunity among Bujold's best, but it's still a lot better than almost everything else out there.

I liked Doranna Durgin's A Feral Darkness. I couldn't entirely sympathize with the heroine since I don't care much for dogs, and the main character's life is centered on them. (It's not that I dislike dogs all that much. I just am a little allergic and don't like how they smell or feel comfortable being drooled on.) The story had a kind of creepy sense of growing menace without getting all that specific about the supernatural aspects until after the mundane framework was well established.

I've also read a handful of romance novels recently. None of them were all that memorable although I'll probably be keeping a couple of them to lend to friends in search of fluffy reading. LunarGeography and I had an interesting conversation about romance novels recently. A lot of the ones I've read and enjoyed focused rather more on building family and community than on romance/sex while most of the ones she's read and remembered used romance as an excuse for steamy sex scenes. I suspect that the romance novel has been used as a vehicle for many different impulses and mythologies, so I'm not all that surprised that we've encountered different ones. Viewing the genre as monolithic or as single-themed seems as shallow to me as some of the worst romance novels I've tried to read.

I suppose it's another of my anthropological impulses to want to analyze the various types of romance novels to see why they interest people and what they can tell me about our culture and desires. I'd have to read a lot more of them in order to make it work, though. It's another one of those inquiries that I just don't have any real notion of how to pursue. I have many things that make me curious about which I can't even quite frame questions.