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Sumiki

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Blog Entries posted by Sumiki

  2. Sumiki
    My grandmother is making excellent physical progress; she's far beyond where she was a week after the first surgery. The physical therapy the rehab center is making her is above and beyond what we are capable of assisting her with.
     
    The painkillers have made her equal parts loopy, groggy, and irritable. Her loopiness makes her forgetful and willing to say things in her sleep worthy of my status updates (my personal favorite is "baby fig, baby fig, oh, baby fig ... CHICKEN"), her grogginess makes her fall asleep in the middle of eating, and her irritability makes her demanding ... when she's not subject to mood whiplash, going from laughing at a joke to crying about nearly dropping an orange.
     
    The frustrating part about this scenario is that she craves things—either material items, like clothing, or her favorite snacks, like olives. Today saw us go down to the rehab center a little over an hour away, go out to the grocery store in rush hour to get olives, only to have her eat two before realizing that they needed to be chilled. She did this a couple of times after surgery #1, with hamburgers and barbecue.
     
    It's impossible for me to be aggravated at her, because I know that this is the medicine and not her normal personality. All the same, I do hope that she's able to continue recovering at the same rate so she can get her personality back, as talking to her now can be like trying to talk to a toddler.
  3. Sumiki
    After struggling mightily to cull excellent entries down to a lone winner, Sumiki's Dad has chosen Portalfig as the winner of Blogarithm Contest #9: Vakama Eats Spam‽
     
    Portalfig will be featured in The Adventures of Sumiki's Dad 2: Vakama Eats Spam, to be posted shortly in the Comedies forum. In addition, Portalfig will receive a signed copy of The Adventures of Sumiki's Dad saga upon its completion—signed, of course, by Sumiki's Dad himself.
     
    Dallior08 and Pohatu: Master of Stone came in second and third places, respectively. As witness to the judging process, I assure you that the decision was difficult and not taken lightly.
  4. Sumiki

    Ups and Downs

    By Sumiki,

    My grandmother progressed well after her second surgery, but the doctors wanted her to go to rehab to make her move around enough to prevent scar tissue from forming in her back, which was part of why she had to have a second surgery in the first place. Though we all knew it was the best thing for her, she didn't take it with a sound mind; although she doesn't have any sort of dementia, the pain medicine regimen the hospital put her on threw her brain for a loop.
     
    Essentially, while given these medications, her sense of cognitive reasoning flies out the window, she's unable to distinguish between dreams and reality, and the list of things that make her cry expands to include things like not being able to find the remote control.
     
    Rehab has had a few issues, mostly due to the lack of communication between nurses, doctors, her, and us. We had to straighten them out tonight and get everyone on the same page.
     
    The worst part is that she was diagnosed with MRSA. Although the vast majority of MRSA cases are treatable (including this one), she took it especially hard, since in her time working in physical therapy, MRSA was right under Ebola in terms of scary, deadly diseases.
     
    But since we've been with her for two months, I'm really nervous that we should get ourselves checked out; MRSA's still very deadly if it gets in your system for over a few days without detection.
     
    Every time I think things are really turning a corner, another ton of bricks drops on all of our heads. While I'm concerned for my grandmother the most, I know that my parents are really exerting themselves too.
  5. Sumiki

    Sumiki's Dad Returns

    By Sumiki,

    Sumiki's Dad and Team Farm Animals return to the Comedies forum after a brief hiatus. With an all-new setting and an outrageous supporting cast, Vakama Eats Spam promises to tackle the tough questions, like "why does Vakama eat Spam?"
     
    The promised feature of the Blogarithm Contest #9 winner will occur in later chapters, so I decided to begin posting the story in advance of the announcement on the winner.
  6. Sumiki

    Things are looking up

    By Sumiki,

    My grandmother went through Major Back Surgery #2 this past Thursday in order to repair the things that were going awry with the healing from Major Back Surgery #1. Because of the length of surgery, the amount of scar tissue from the first one, and the overall risk of complication, we thought that the ordeal would make her even weaker.
     
    Two days later, she's walking around at twice what the doctors thought she'd be able to handle and hasn't needed nearly the same amount of painkillers she needed before. Forty-eight hours after the first surgery and she was still extremely groggy, whereas this evening she was—IV hookups and hospital settings notwithstanding—her usual impish self.
     
    She avoided rehab the first time—a move we acquiesced to because she's quite a homebody—but this time the doctors wanted her to do more extensive physical therapy to avoid the possibility of a third surgery. While I know she'll be homesick while in rehab, facing that as a reality instead of a mere possibility has only increased her drive to do more therapy and get better faster. By all accounts, she's on the right track, and ahead of schedule at that.
     
    I have appreciated your thoughts and prayers over these past two months. If everything keeps going smoothly, everything should be back to normal by the new year.
     
    (In other news, you still have a little over a day left to enter Blogarithm Contest #9: Vakama Eats Spam‽ if you haven't done so already. The story is done save for inserting the name of the winner; the results [and first chapter] should be out early next week.)
  7. Sumiki
    As many of you know, my comedy The Adventures of Sumiki's Dad concluded after eight thrilling chapters, and work has begun on the second installment in the series. The Adventures of Sumiki's Dad 2: Vakama Eats Spam is coming soon to the Comedies forum. So what better way to celebrate than a contest?
     
    New characters will complete Team Farm Animals in an exciting romp through the BIONICLE Universe. One of these new characters will be the winner of this contest.
     
    Your job: Post, in this entry, your reason why Vakama would eat spam, preferably in the style of Sumiki's Dad. Sumiki's Dad himself will judge the entries.
     
    You have until Sunday, December 14th at 11:59 PM Eastern to enter, and only one entry is allowed per member.
     
    (If you appeared in The Adventures of Sumiki's Dad, you are still free to enter.)
  8. Sumiki

    Things haven't been good

    By Sumiki,

    My grandmother has been recovering slowly but steadily since her mid-October surgery. There have been a number of setbacks, including bronchitis, but none more disheartening than the thought of getting another surgery and going through the process again.
     
    Unfortunately, the spacers they inserted into her back have moved and have temporarily paralyzed one of her feet. A second surgery is now a must if she wants to walk normally again, and it has to be done immediately before the bone heals around the spacer.
     
    The scary thing isn't the pain she'll go through—the nerves, which caused much of the post-surgery pain, have all but completely healed in every place but that foot—it's the time she's under anesthesia, which was the root cause of the problems in her first surgery.
     
    We all thought the process would be over by Thanksgiving, and yet there's still no end in sight. Your thoughts and prayers are very much appreciated.
     
    I hope that my activity can return to a more normal basis by January. Mindless diversions from constantly worrying have done me some psychological good, and in that vein, you can expect the sequel to The Adventures of Sumiki's Dad some time soon.
  9. Sumiki
    A TALE OF SUMIKI'S DAD
     
    how to party with alka-seltzer and mean it
     
    barbecued draperies: if you don't eat it, we cover it up for free
     
    fuzzy shrimp
     
    it's elementary, my dear cheesepuff
     
    lips: be free or create asphalt
     
    you can do things with watermelon
     
    lysol for your sinuses
     
    you've got a candy cane, we've got pretzel lampshades
  11. Sumiki
    Hello and welcome to a special edition of SUMIKI INVESTIGATES, the pinnacle of lazy and probably biased blog-based quasi-journalism.
     
    For a long time here at BZPower, staff members have been barred from changing their names. This was changed a few years ago so that staff members could change names, but not on their own whims; rather, all changes had to be approved by the administration. Members could change their names every 90 days, Premier members every 45, and OBZPCs every 30.
     
    And for a very long period of time, staff members going into their settings saw a list of options—except for "Display Name." Alas, the price of having even the barest modicum of power to our credit on this slice of the Internet meant that we had to give up the ability to change our names, a power which I made a habit of abusing in earlier years as I went by moniker after moniker, many of which I'd just as soon forget.
     
    All this changed at some point. Now, if I go into my settings, there it sits, as if it had never left:
     

     
    Two mysteries surround this screenshot. To whit:
    Would it have done anything if I had entered a new display name and my password?
    If it lets me, why is the limit set at 90 days instead of a) the OBZPC 30, or b) a longer length of time, as set by the administration?

    These facts are not troublesome in as far as they pique my curiosity. I do not wish to try it, as I don't want to either ruffle the feathers of an administration that doesn't want this to be a thing and that doesn't realize that the option appears to have been turned on, or be stuck with something I might end up hating before 90 days is up.
     
    SHOULD I TRY IT?
     
    (before anyone says anything, I know this probably belongs in the tracker, but I felt as if it makes for a funny blog post anyway)
  12. Sumiki

    On Showrunners

    By Sumiki,

    In terms of changing fundamental aspects of Doctor Who, Russell T. Davies did more than Steven Moffat.
     
    I'm not trying to advocate for Moffat's writing; I find it tedious, prone to overly emotional appeals, filled with plot holes, and beset with pacing issues. As far as good ideas for series go, each successive series since Matt Smith took over the role has been worse than the last, although I think Death in Heaven was an improvement over The Time of the Doctor. (To be fair, watching my toenails grow would have been preferable to The Time of the Doctor.)
     
    However, I don't find every criticism of Moffat legitimate, for as much as I may agree with many of the commonly brought-up points, others stand out to me like sore thumbs. (As a disclaimer, I should probably say that this isn't directed at anyone.)
     
    So, Doctor Who was rebooted in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and Russell T. Davies as showrunner. Over the course of that season and all of David Tennant's run, we learn that
    The TARDIS doors are the same on the inside.
    The TARDIS looks vastly different on the inside.
    The Doctor is the last of the Time Lords because the others are all dead.
    The Doctor is fine with having a romantic relationship with a companion.
    The titles no longer feature the Doctor's face.
    John Simm was a totally out-of-character Master.

    As far as Show-Changing Events are concerned, the third is the biggest. It literally changed the course of the show, from the Doctor being a rebellious child of Gallifrey to its lone, remorseful survivor. This was the biggest plot point to date, and all of it was offscreen, and there was no real established reason for it other than ... well, RTD wanted it.
     
    And no one hated him for it.
     
    We skip ahead to the 50th Anniversary Special, easily one of my favorite episodes of the revival. In it, we learn that Gallifrey's fate is sealed in a parallel universe through the combined efforts of the Doctor's incarnations. The end result is practically the same in that the Doctor cannot get to Gallifrey and does not nullify the Time War as a terrible chapter in the Doctor's personal history.
     
    And a lot of people hated him for it.
     
    So the question is: what gives? Are there enough voices in the fandom willing to criticize Moffat for every decision he makes? Is anything associated with his name tarnished, regardless of whether or not it's problematic?
     
    To some extent, Moffat is subverting decisions that RTD made, especially in the Capaldi era. The 12th Doctor is more aloof and alien, the TARDIS is the most classic design in the revival, the faces are back in the titles, and the Time War has been—as mentioned above—quasi-subverted.
     
    If you dislike his writing because "he's changing the show," you're looking at Doctor Who since 2005. In the scope of its nearly fifty-one years, both RTD and Moffat have made radical changes.
     
    tl;dr Moffat's issues lie more in his execution of concepts than the concepts themselves.
  13. Sumiki

    The Fish Camp

    By Sumiki,

    Ah, the fish camp—a beloved institution in the southern United States. Just about anywhere there's enough people, you can find—tucked away, no doubt—a rickety old building packed with a large clientele. These fish camps are not chains, but a kind of restaurant, and their sole purpose is to take the fruits of the sea and deep-fry them until any semblance of flavor disintegrates.
     
    I generally try to avoid these kinds of places, but as I am still with my grandmother during her surgical recovery, she dictates meals if she has a particular craving. First it was a burger, then it was fried chicken, and today? A fish camp.
     
    This particular place is an establishment, though I know not how. Family on my mom's side used to get food from this place at every reunion, although thankfully they stopped that tradition a few years ago. Tucked away behind a drugstore, its smell can be sniffed anywhere in the vicinity—and it smells more of old oil than of fish.
     
    Their staple? Overwhelming portions. They prize quantity over quality, and the more you get, the less is edible. There was enough in my box to feed a family for three weeks, so I'll let you figure out how it tasted. My grandmother was wise enough—despite frequent medicine-induced mid-sentence sleeping spells—to order broiled shrimp.
     
    If there ever is a need to go back to that place, I think I'll follow her lead.
  14. Sumiki

    SHOULD I DO NANOWRIMO

    By Sumiki,

    CONS:
     
    I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME
    I'M UNCOMFORTABLE WRITING ON LARGE SCALES BECAUSE I'M AFRAID OF BUNGLING THINGS
    50,000 WORDS IS A LOT
     
    PROS:
     
    I HAVE AN EXCELLENT IDEA
    I WOULD BE ABLE TO SAY "I WON NANOWRIMO"
  16. Sumiki

    Music for Others

    By Sumiki,

    Last year at this time, I was a featured performer at a local recital of the students of area music teachers. There were many present, and I performed (somewhat poorly, to be honest) the third movement of Charles Ives' dreadfully hard Piano Sonata No. 2, commonly called the Concord Sonata after the piece's cumbersome subtitle. The performance caught the ear of a young prodigy who had performed earlier in the recital.
     
    This wouldn't be much to write about except for the fact that she is legally blind and she played a piece by ear that most college piano majors couldn't sight-read. In addition, she is slightly autistic, and shy around people, which made it all the more shocking to her teacher when she told her that she wanted to talk to me after the recital was over. It was there that I learned her story, including her new goal: to learn the piece I performed. (Her teacher, more familiar with the technical demands of the Concord, tried in vain to contain her enthusiasm.)
     
    I found it a heartwarming human-interest story for many reasons, but I thought rather little of it as 2013 ended and 2014 began. But a new year brought with it another recital - this one sponsored by a different music club and featuring many of the same faces. I finished a rousing Brahms waltz and Gershwin's enigmatic Impromptu in Two Keys, but the star of the show was once again the young prodigy, who in a span of a few months taught herself to play the violin and perform a fairly technical piece complete with double stops - something she figured out how to do herself.
     
    I congratulated her at the reception following the recital and - although she could barely see me - remembered my performance that past November and reiterated to her teacher her immense desire to learn that movement of the Concord. The conversation turned to her skill at jazz improvisation, which she and her teacher demonstrated on a rickety baby grand in the church basement the reception was held in. The next thing I know, I'm in the mix too, and we're playing a six-hand arrangement of a tune that the prodigy was improvising. It was, quite easily, some of the most fun I've ever had at the piano.
     
    On the drive back, I thought intently about the way the recital had gone and decided to write some piano music to dedicate to the young prodigy. After wondering about structure, I decided to go with a 23-piece suite, roughly arranged by technical difficulty. With no other major compositional projects on my hands at the time, I knocked out 18 pieces between January and April. Another piece, which I wrote for my honor society's graduation ceremony, became the 19th piece (and one of my favorites).
     
    I put it on the back burner during the third Great American Road Trip and it remained there through the summer's composition workshop (where I premiered eight of the suite's pieces) and then through the always-tiring BrickFair (#teamfarmanimals). Last month, most of my time was spent orchestrating one of my pieces for a local youth orchestra contest. If my entry wins, it'll be played and recorded - let's just hope the music director doesn't have any qualms with its difficulty. (I submitted it today - wish me luck!)
     
    With another (much larger) orchestral piece progressing smoothly, I have returned my focus to the final movements of this suite, knocking out two more pieces over the past week.
     
    I have two more pieces to write and edit while I'm putting all 23 into notation software, then editing all of the music so it can be compiled into a PDF, then printed and bound, all before November 2nd.
     
    Why November 2nd?
     
    That just so happens to be the next recital, almost a year to the day since I performed part of the Concord Sonata. This time, I'm playing Sunset by Frank Bridge, and The Tides of Manaunaun by Henry Cowell. (My piano teacher took a class from Cowell back in the day - to quote him, "it was a counterpoint class, but he didn't teach counterpoint so much as blow his nose into a handkerchief he never washed."
     
    At the recital, I'm also giving her (and her teacher) a copy of the finished score. I'm expecting the final total to be somewhere around seventy-five pages of music, although with double-sided printing this number would obviously be halved.
     
    I don't know why I stayed up so late writing this when I should either be sleeping or composing.
  17. Sumiki

    Surgery

    By Sumiki,

    My grandmother underwent a significant back surgery today. There was one complication, but it was resolved, and she is recovering as well as can be expected at this point.
     
    My activity has and will remain sparse for a while, as will (likely) my emotions. It's been a very long day in the midst of an even longer week.
  18. Sumiki

    Thoughts on Grammar

    By Sumiki,

    Perhaps I've always been wrong.
     
    I've always been one to really notice when other people don't use proper grammar. I blame my mother for this. To us both, seeing something grammatically incorrect is like hearing fingernails being dragged across a blackboard.
     
    Yet over the years we've both been put into a great many positions where this has caused problems. It mortifies me when I look back at tracts of writing and find errors, and I'm one to extensively rewrite and proofread everything I write - blog posts, e-mails, even texts in the few instances where I've written them. Heck, I just rewrote the entire previous sentence out of a mix of habit and compulsion.
     
    Part of this stems from a kind of perfectionism that I've had to overcome in order to finish any creative endeavor I've ever undertaken. Part of it is as I've recounted - a lifelong obsession with proper grammar. But truth be told, I think a lot of it has come from not wanting to look like a fool on the Internet, which is a vast, wonderful, and occasionally scary place where first impressions mean a lot more and false information travels with the same speed as fact.
     
    Grammar is supposed to make language clear, concise, and intelligible. We may be able to understand simple language devoid of grammatical rules, but the ability to truly and deeply understand nuances in a society without grammar is tantamount to impossible. Even with the seemingly arbitrary rules which grammar provides for us, there is the possibility for misunderstanding. That's another slice of the equation for me - a fear of being misunderstood. All too often I fear as if this has worked against me, almost as if my compulsion to refine and rewrite actually decreases my overall clarity.
     
    This is why there is nothing like talking to someone face to face. Writing is full of pitfalls of miscommunication and misunderstanding, regardless of grammar. Body language and tone of voice communicate far more than words can alone, and what would otherwise be an ambiguous sentence in text can be as clear as a midday sky with tone of voice and perhaps a few well-placed hand gestures.
     
    That said, much of grammar is an exclusively textual thing. It's technically not right to end sentences with prepositions as much as it's technically not right to split infinitives, but this is how we talk. I do it far more than I can even keep up with because, for all my inclination for noticing these kinds of errors, they are so deeply ingrained into the way we speak that they go past my ears without That Part of my brain catching them.
     
    I have gotten better at this, I think. Other's grammatical shortcomings don't bother me nearly as much as they used to, although I tend to squirm internally every time someone screws up the usage of "well" and "good." Grammar takes the role of guidelines rather than rules - important, to be sure, but not the be-all end-all by-the-book my-way-or-the-highway set of rigid rules that must be followed.
     
    Part of this was my realization that the world won't change, especially since I've never been one to point out another's grammatical mistakes unless a) I've turned into a jerk after a very bad day, or b) someone says something so incontrovertibly and unbelievably stupid that pointing out typos and grammar flaws becomes a mere bullet in a round of ammunition, which I proverbially load if I so choose. Otherwise, since I wasn't trying to fix what I saw as a relatively minor (but annoying) issue, it was an internal problem.
     

    [xkcd #1108]
     
    But back to my opening point: perhaps I'm wrong about all of this. Perhaps my view of grammar, though evolved from an admitted high horse, is still too high of an expectation. Perhaps I've spent too much time on the Internet where folks don't have qualms about not capitalizing their sentences or ending them with punctuation. If my position had never evolved at all, I'd be unable to enjoy half of the things I do - heck, I'd be incapable of making up any of my status updates (despite the recent claims of a quasi-anonymous member on a popular blogging platform, I maintain that they are hilarious).
     
    I'm not perfect and I've come to realize that many things I thought to be immutable facts all of five years ago are suddenly not. I attribute a lot to those who talk about social justice, and although I have my problems with its surrounding culture, I'd be a lot worse of a person overall if I were still in the dark about those kinds of issues.
     
    My sense of what people should and shouldn't do when it comes to this matter has eroded, as in the examples I mentioned above, but is it wrong of me to ever mention someone's error online if I am unaware of the poster's background? I occasionally provide helpful feedback to members in the Library about grammatical or spelling errors I find, if there is a repetition of the same error, but a) I keep it as helpful and non-confrontational as possible, and b) it is out of not wanting anyone else to be perceived poorly because of a simple mistake. If someone is consistently misspelling a certain word or typing in run-on paragraphs, I feel as if it's part of my duty - especially as a staff member - to help.
     
    There is only one time in recent memory where I chided someone for their grammatical inadequacy, and it was in response to the same quasi-anon I mentioned earlier. In a series of four messages, each less coherent than the last, their grammar deteriorated along with the logic behind their argument. In my responses to these messages, I dedicated scant few sentences - two or three out of veritable walls of text - to examining their lack of grammatical accuracy as a tangential point to my logical deconstruction of their argument. I was not going after them solely because of this, and in fact, I would say that the vast, vast majority of what I wrote pertained to breaking apart a really weird and problematic point of view.
     
    But even in that mere sliver which I devoted to the side-note of pointing out their lack of grammar, did I go too far? Is it a stain on my escutcheon caused by overzealousness in annihilating a harmful point of view?
     
    I don't know, but maybe I was wrong to do so.
     
    And if I was wrong then, perhaps I always have been.
  22. Sumiki

    Protip

    By Sumiki,

    If you're going to send anonymous messages, proofread them.
     
    There's nothing more embarrassing than giving someone else ammunition when you've already shot yourself.
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