Last Gasp Of Winter

 

We got a bit of snow last night.  Not enough to get out the plow  In fact it is already melting.

 

It was warm enough that the cat wanted to go outside.  And then he didn't.  And then he did.  The whole Door Into Summer that Heinlein wrote about.

 

It is currently 39° and Rhett has a fur coat so I finally just shut the door behind him and finished my coffee.

I DON'T have a fur coat.

The Martian

 


I used to read a lot of science fiction.  I own all of Robert Heinlein's books and have read them all more than once.  I haven't liked any science fiction author as well, until I read The Martian by Andy Weir.  I took it on a recent trip and almost finished the book on the plane.

Astronaut Mark Watney gets stranded on Mars when the mission he is on gets scrubbed for bad weather.  He is hit by a piece of equipment and it punches a hole in his suit.  And his person.  The equipment also damages his bio monitor, so the rest of the crew thought he was dead and took off before their escape vehicle was blown over in the storm, trapping them all.

This takes place in the first chapter and the rest of the book is all about how this brilliant and funny astronaut survives all alone on a planet with no hope for rescue, until the next resupply ship is scheduled.  Mars is a long way away from Earth, so this means years.

I love all the detail in this book.  Granted the science sometimes left me behind.  I will admit to skipping some paragraphs.  This did not lessen my enjoyment in any way.  In fact, Weir's science knowledge and descriptions remind me a good deal of Heinlein.  He also was a scientist and used it for his books.

Weir worked as a programmer for a national laboratory at age fifteen and claims to be a lifelong space nerd.  He brings in such things as the Apollo flights and 70's TV shows to make a very funny and entertaining book.  Even though Mark is all alone, he keeps a log, so you know his thoughts and actions. 

Mark is a botanist and the crew were sent up some real potatoes for the Thanksgiving meal they were supposed to have on Mars.  He uses these and his "night soil" to grow a lot of potatoes.  I love the ingenuity on all the things he did to survive.  I hated that he took two steps forward and then things conspired to send him a step or two back.  There were a lot of nail biting, breath holding moments.

The whole world is aware of his fate and they are all working together to try to save him.

On my trip home, I discovered that the movie was on the list of programming on my flight.  Fabulous.  I watched it and they included all of the major points in the book, without too much in the way of changing things around to fit the shorter format.  Even though I knew how the book ended, I wasn't sure of what they would do with the movie.  But the movie held true to the end.  It even added an epilogue that I really liked that the book didn't have.

So my recommendation is to read the book first, almost always the best thing, and then watch the movie.  And take your kids.  Maybe they will pay more attention in science classes.  It could save their lives!

I Want To Check You For Ticks

OK.  That is a quote from Brad Paisley's song.  And I don't really want to.  Use a mirror.

  

Ticks are bad for us this year.  One of the main issues for us, is fields full of uncut grass.  Ticks are opportunistic predators and climb out to the end of a stalk of grass.  Then, when you brush against the grass...they got ya! 

  

Did you know ticks were related to spiders?  So you have a spider that can bury its' head in your flesh and suck your blood.  And then they don't have the courtesy to have a meal and move on.  No.  They LIVE there until they fill up like a miniature balloon and fall off to feast on blood another day. And the worst part is when they are sucking you dry,  they are sharing bodily fluids with you and if they have a disease, so do you!

We will have to bush hog the grass before it is time to pick blackberries, if  it becomes impossible to cut it for hay.  I do not want to wade through thigh-high grass to pick berries.

We use Frontline for the pets, but there is only surface applied products like OFF! for us people and you have to keep reapplying it.  Even with Frontline, our dog got a few ticks and they ended up giving him Lyme's disease and ehrlichia.  He was on antibiotics for weeks and I am not entirely sure they did the job. Oh, goody.  More vet bills.

 

So when I read this article in the paper this morning, I got excited.  A robot that kills ticks and does not leave poison behind.

 

I love the whole concept of robots doing the work I don't want to do.  Maybe it was a childhood growing up reading, no devouring, Robert Heinlein. He was the best science fiction writer, ever.  His book, The Door Into Summer combined cats, robots, romance and time travel.  It is way dated because it was written in the '50s, but still enjoyable.

I sent a copy of the article to my son, Travis.  He is working on his Mechanical Engineering PhD and has built quite a few robots.   Here's hoping I get one for Christmas.  Of course, I have also requested a wind turbine to generate electricity.  That is at the top of my post doc gift list.

But tick removal is way up there.

An Infectious and Contagious Book Review

Lee and I spent yesterday afternoon clearing even more brush out of the same gully. You really don't need any pictures. The more we cleared the more we uncovered, but we got tired and quit "to fight another day" or however the quote goes. I do have a Bartlett's Quotations, but it is in another room...a cold room... so this will have to do. I will post some pictures when we get the whole thing cleared. Just to see what there is. We found a bunch more barrels and some tires and who knows what's under that?

It has been warm and the snow is melting fast which makes the ground muddy and slippery and we all got covered, including RJ. He had to have a half bath. I washed his feet and underneath so that he could come in the house!

I don't usually write book reviews on this blog, but I read such a great book I wanted to write about it. I see a lot of books come across my desk. Frequently one catches my eye and I read the back to see if I should take it home or shelve it. When Rena catches me at it, she says, "You can't read every book that you check in!" And I reply, "Why not?" Running gag.

This one particular book stopped me because of one of the quotes on the back from the reviewer, Bookreporter.com, "...continues the work that Robert A. Heinlein left undone..." When I was 13 my parents took me and all of the kids still living at home to the Kingdom of Tonga, in the South Pacific for my father's sabbatical. We would be gone for a year and had to be able to carry a suitcase and one carry-on. We are a family of readers, so I knew I had to have a few books, along with whatever clothes I would need for A YEAR! The good thing was that it would be warm and bathing suits and shorts and T-shirts would suffice for the most part. (Once we got to Tonga we realized I had to have a skirt for school and a vala for going in to town, but that is a whole different subject.)

The dilemma was, which books do I take? Obviously books are heavier than clothes and I needed to take a toothbrush and other items of personal grooming, so I had to pick and choose wisely. I took four books and carried them the whole year. My favorite was The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlein. I read and re-read that book so many times I almost became the book as in Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. (What do you mean you never read that! Well, hurry up and read it and then come back.)

So when Bookreporter.com referenced Robert Heinlein and I read the review, I knew what they were talking about and had to read Contagious by Scott Sigler. A short few chapters in I realized that this was a sequel to his first book in the series, Infectious. I hate that! I like to get the first one and go all the way through without taking a breath! If I know a book is a sequel I go to KDL.org and find all the books in order and start at the beginning. It was too late now. The book took off on a tear and never let up. As soon as I go to work the next morning I ordered the first in the series and then I read it out of sequence.

Both Contagious and Infected were good stand alone books, but because I had read them out of order I knew what had happened to the characters later on and this made Infected not as good as Contagious for me. You have to read them in order.

The premise of the two books is that there is an infectious agent that has a cluster in and near Michigan. The people infected have a bite or series of bites that itch outrageously. The bites rapidly become bigger and the bigger they get the more paranoid and delusional the victims become. If graphic violence and gruesome autopsy details turn your stomach then these books are not for you. Even though I have read a lot of books these scenes are very intense and I wanted to put the book down for a bit. But then I couldn't and I had to dive back in. The books are not short, but you can't put them down long enough to catch your breath, so start on a weekend!

The violence escalates to the point that the CDC, Homeland Security, the CIA and even the president are involved. Because they don't know if this is a manufactured agent from terrorists or even something from outer space they strive to keep this contagion secret from the public even though various characters want to scream it out so everyone will go to the hospital as soon as the symptoms occur. But if everyone with an itchy bite or rash goes to the hospital and shot anyone coming close to them with a red spot chaos would reign!

Each book covers only a few days so the pace is fast and furious. They have to figure out what it is, where it is coming from and stop it before the whole area erupts into violence all while keeping the secrecy from the local police and the press. They end up blaming SARS and the flesh eating bacteria to explain the HazMat suits at the crime scenes that they take away from the local officials.

I went on Amazon to see if there was a book number 3 out there. He has a new book, but on a different subject. The end of Contagious left it wide open for another book and I hope Mr. Sigler writes one.