Sounds like a positive reinforcement per book may be a good idea for him -- sounds like he needs a milestone to make the goal more attractive.

I could use a couple of those myself....

This week is so stupid.

Agreed. Though at least today I managed to come to work with both my cell phone and wallet, which puts me ahead of yesterday.

Vibing for Grace!

Consuela - as stressful as it may be, good on you for donating blood. CJ and I go tomorrow morning and then I get a bonus dentist appointment.

Good on you and CJ too, Suzi, though I'm sorry you'll be following up the blood donation with the dentist. May they go easy on you. I'm giving blood on Friday morning, which will totally be my excuse for overindulging on Thursday -- I've got to keep up my strength, you know!

So, the conversation has moved on, but since I'm actually reading NW right now, I wanted to comment on that Zadie Smith quote:

"I grew up reading a generation of American and English people like [Saul] Bellow, [John] Updike or [Martin] Amis. Everybody’s neutral unless they’re black — then you hear about it: the black man, the black woman, the black person. Of course, if you happen to be black the world doesn’t look that way to you. I just wanted to try and create perhaps a sense of alienation and otherness in this person, the white reader, to remind them that they are not neutral to other people." Zadie Smith, discussing how she never mentions the race of any of the characters in her new novel, NW, unless they are white

The assumption here seems to be that white people don't mention race of white people. I can't work out if it is also that black people don't mention race of black people. How do Asian people deal? Are they in the book?

The explanation at the end of that quote ("she never mentions the race of any of the characters in her new novel, NW, unless they are white") seems like a rather inaccurate description of the book. Of the four narrators, one is white and three are black (two of them have Jamaican parents; I haven't gotten to the last one's section yet, but the first narrator mentions that he has an afro). The races of various characters are mentioned in different ways, depending on who is speaking, so certainly some black characters are identified by their race, and there are a few Asian characters whose race comes up in conversation or narration as well. I see the point Zadie Smith is making in her quote, and I think it works well in the book -- at least, the way that characters speak about race feels pretty natural to me. But it's not only the white characters whose race is mentioned.

Anyway, I'm quite enjoying the book! It's not long on plot, but she's fantastic with dialogue and I love the way she sketches her characters and settings.

Go Grace!

Wishing you endurance, Consuela. and a bit of solitude for Suzi.

I'm sorry, Theo. That sort of loss is hard.

Kate, did you read White Teeth?

In the OR waiting room, you can have almost real time tracking of where the patient is in terms of surgery. I mean, nothing detailed, but still interesting.

I also learned why this process is so time intensive. Grace's stenosis is right below her vocal chords. If it had been lower then they would have done a reconstruction long ago. But they can't without damagin the chords. So we have to do it this way which blows. But now makes more sense.

I continue to believe that David Malki ! must lurk here: [link]

Nice work, mac!

Sorry--stuff is on my mind because my father just gave up two years of trying to add me to his investment accounts, and finally gave up (probably legall messy on a number of levels, since I work for an investment firm, never mind tax issues) and put my sister on them instead to hold them for me.

My parents just met with their lawyer and put me in charge of everything if anything happens to my mother, finally -- I was actually a little worried about that, since I knew a few years ago they had put each other as backups and I knew that wouldn't work anymore.

In random news, my boss gave us each a paperwhite bulb in a jar as a gift, and I'm terrified for the day they all bloom! I will be driven out of the office by the smell. Maybe I'll bring mine home anyway for the long weekend, and then I can dispose of it if/when necessary.

Kat, I did read White Teeth, ages ago. I've read all four of her novels, and of the latter three, NW seems the most like White Teeth in terms of both setting and themes, though it's more experimental (sometimes needlessly so, IMO) in terms of structure.

I also learned why this process is so time intensive. Grace's stenosis is right below her vocal chords. If it had been lower then they would have done a reconstruction long ago. But they can't without damagin the chords. So we have to do it this way which blows. But now makes more sense.

Ah, that sucks that there isn't a faster way to do this, but I guess at least it's nice to know there's a good reason for it?

So this could be exciting: Big News From Mars? Rover Scientists Mum For Now

Scientists working on NASA's six-wheeled rover on Mars have a problem. But it's a good problem.

They have some exciting new results from one of the rover's instruments. On the one hand, they'd like to tell everybody what they found, but on the other, they have to wait because they want to make sure their results are not just some fluke or error in their instrument.

...

SAM is a kind of miniature chemistry lab. Put a sample of Martian soil or rock or even air inside SAM, and it will tell you what the sample is made of.

Grotzinger says they recently put a soil sample in SAM, and the analysis shows something earthshaking. "This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good," he says.

We'll probably have to wait a few weeks for the announcement of what they found. But "earthshaking" and "one for the history books" makes me think they found evidence of life.

(This is not the methane false alarm they had last week.)

"This These data is are gonna be one ones for the history books. It's looking really good," he says.

t /pedant