Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Hail Eris!

Yes, 2003 UB313, the world some blame for the "demotion" of Pluto, has an official name, and the discoverer found something better than "Xena".

This morning, I did not go out to Jamaica for a Surrogate's Court hearing.

I was informed about six weeks ago that a cousin of my father's had died without a will, and that I might be one of the heirs. The paperwork listed my father, my aunt Fran, and a cousin on the other side as first cousins, then noted me, my brother, and my father's widow as his heirs.

It turned out that in order to pursue a claim, I was supposed to produce a variety of paperwork, some of which was simple enough, and some of which would be difficult and expensive even if possible (my paternal grandfather's birth certificate, assuming he ever had one, in a specific form of certified-by-the-Russian-government copy, and a certified translation). On further investigation, it also appears that my brother and I aren't actually entitled to inherit, because my father's widow takes precedent. She died a few months ago, but her children inherit there, not us.

Given how tired I've been the last several weeks, it was almost a relief to discover that there was no reason for me to go down there (yes, in theory, I could have arranged to be in Jamaica at 9 a.m., if I got up early enough. Or we could have hired a lawyer to pursue this for us—for all I know, my aunt or my father's other cousin did so, but there seemed no point to my contacting them and suggesting we hire a joint lawyer. Had I heard from either of them, I'd probably have said sure, the same lawyer can act for all of us, but I decided after a week or so that I wasn't going to be the person pushing for something that they would definitely benefit from and I probably wouldn't.

I do intend to see a lawyer, but not about this except to the extent that it brought it to mind. I want to write a will; cattitude is automatically my heir under New York law, which is fine, but if he dies first (or we die in the hypothetical shared plane crash) after that would be my mother, who is in good health but thirty years older than me, and my brother, who is a nice person but not particularly close to me. And then an assortment of cousins. Partners I'm not married to, and other family of choice, don't come in there automatically; the state doesn't know about them or recognize those relationships. So I need to do this explictly. I think I should talk to a lawyer to make sure I get this right and don't wind up with people wasting lots of time and money in court one of these decades. (What I don't know, other than whether I need to explicitly say that yes, I know I have a brother and mother (and cousins?), but I want these people to inherit anyway, is how much identifying information I need to provide about my chosen family so the court doesn't make trouble about them proving they're the person of that name I'm talking about.) I looked at a Nolo Press book, but it's geared to certain specific, common situations, which mine doesn't seem to be: if you want to leave it all to one grandchild out of several, they'll help you, but non-biological kin you're not married to isn't in there. Maybe there's a book aimed at people in same-sex relationships that will help.

I went out for a walk in the park about an hour ago. It rained pretty hard in the morning, and was still gray and overcast, so there were very few humans in the park.

The mallards and Canada geese were mostly on the lawns between the water and Indian Road, some grazing, some just sitting there, some walking around but not grazing. That, more than the temperature (mid-60s F/upper teens C), felt autumnal.

The two egrets sitting on the new kayak/canoe dock aren't particularly seasonal, but it was good to see that the birds like the new metal dock as well as the decrepit concrete it replaced. (The concrete was well past use for ducks, though fine to walk on except at high tide.) I stopped and talked briefly with someone sitting on a bench, who confirmed that yes, there were two—I'd been sure of one on the railing and one on the dock itself, then came closer and the lower one was hard to see, so I asked him. Another few steps toward him, and both were clearly visible again.

This is a photomicrograph of ascorbic acid (vitamin C), courtesy of the Molecular Expressions website, which in turn is courtesy of the National High Magnetic Field Lab. Thanks to cheshyre for the pointer, though she was calling attention to their images of cocktails as possible icon bases.

For a panel at the Farthing Party this weekend, papersky asked me to read the piece of ianmcdonald's Desolation Road that I read at her and rysmiel's wedding. I couldn't find my copy of the book, but I have Papersky's emails to me about wedding plans, which included the piece I'm reading. I also read some of the emails she'd send me before and after that, including cheerful discussions of what to wear ("anything you like"), the non-necessity of gifts (in which I got silly and talked about the possibility that she already had five platypus warmers or that rysmiel disliked monotremes), and similar things (along with practicalities about airports, rides to Hay, and such). That was fun, in a quiet, reminiscent way.

I pasted the reading into Word, fixed a couple of small transcription errors ("sand" for "sang" and an extra vowel dropped into one of the run-together words that it's full of), and printed it out in 14-point type, so I can practice. (rysmiel is going to bring a copy of the book to the hotel tomorrow, but I didn't feel like waiting.)

First, I read it through taking the advice Papersky gave me five years ago, to read the run-together words a bit faster than normal. Then I had an idea: deliberately read the rest of the text more slowly than my normal conversational speed, which is a good idea when I'm reading aloud, and do the runtogetherphrases in my fast New York way. I think it works, and that thinking of the other parts as "slow down here" rather than those as "speed up now" will probably improve intelligibility, by giving me the contrast without taking me faster than I'm comfortable.