Cold snap update

Two bits of news:

1. My weekly Gungan soap opera recapping job was getting out of hand, but fortunately, a nice person named Amanda is going to split the week with me, so I'll have more time to blog again.
   
   
2. My bowling league has ended. Here are my scores. (Remember, this is CANDLEPIN bowling, not TENPIN.)

Heat wave update...

Just a quick update to assure people I haven't fallen into a Sarlacc pit.

I went to the big podrace with the Darklighters. This time there were no honored guests, and we had excellent seats.

Kenobi's friend Fil is still missing, and Kenobi cheats at bowling.

I've taken a part-time job with a magazine publisher in Mos Eisley -– one reason I haven't been so eager to sit down in front of a computer on my own time lately. It's for a fan magazine about ethnic Gungan soap operas. I do the translations. (Most Naboo can't be bothered to learn Gungan, but my grandfather's lifelong dream was to bring the Naboo and the Gungans closer together, so we all had to learn.)

Fixer now has his son living with him. The boy's mother brought him over for a "visit" and never came back for him. His name is Laze, and he's quite a fixer himself. He's a few years older than Biggs, and all the younger boys seem to look up to him because he grew up someplace else. And all the girls look for him.

Speaking of which, I heard I'm getting new neighbors soon, with more kids, including a girl about Mary Sue's age. I'm not sure if this will be good for Mary Sue (finally another girl she can hang around with), or disastrous (a rival?).

Biggs has converted the fish farm into wading pools, and he charges for admission. That kid is unbelievable.

I love my new One-Onegee (I call him Geetoo), but after just a couple of days I had to deactivate his vocabulator. After having a nearly-silent droid for so many years, it seemed strange to have a nearly identical droid talking to me all the time. Plus, I've never really taken to talking to machines.

Home sweet home, sort of...

Where to begin?

I spent two months on Naboo. Not entirely by choice. I've lived on Tatooine for over 40 years, and this was my first time off the planet since then. Partly, the issue was money. It's very expensive to travel that far. It's also been an issue of leaving the farm for any amount of time. There are people who watch other people's businesses for a living, but I'd never been willing to let someone do that. And even if I had, Naboo has been a hassle to get on and off of ever since the fall of the Republic, thanks to heavy Empire security. I was afraid there might be problems with my changed name - I never updated my passport.

And, finally, there's the old Jedi adage, "you can't go home again." Jedi were typically separated from their families at a very young age, and the few who actually remembered their early friends and family and reunited with them many years later (either because they left the order, got kicked out, or simply found themselves on their homeworld by chance) after such a long absence found it to be a very unsatisfactory, disorienting experience.

I'm hardly a Jedi, but travel problems and slow or unreliable mail (even electronic mail) have limited my communication to Naboo. I've kept in touch with my parents and my sisters, but news of other relatives and old friends have mostly been due to my family's propensity for gossip.

So, when one of my cousins took sick, I was quite surprised to find that she had requested my company. Although it's customary on many planets to bequeath your personal fortune to your survivors, it's more common on Naboo to blow it all during your last days whenever possible. Very often, this means summoning loved ones from all corners of the galaxy to your deathbed, at your own expense.

Well, Jalyn had summoned me, and paid for my first-class travel fare. I hadn't heard from her since my going-away party, but we were very close as children. We had lost two other cousins and several other relatives since then, but (thanks to slow mail) I didn't know about their deaths until some time later. So, I was surprised and touched that she wanted to see me now.

I scrambled to find a caretaker for my farm, and I downgraded my fare to tourist class to help cover the cost. Truthfully, although the circumstances were sad, I was excited, if nervous, to be getting away for a little while. I had been missing Onegee far more than is normal for a human to miss any droid, the fish farm was becoming a disaster, and I was getting stressed out. (Apparently, the more aggressively you try to minimize your stress, the more aggressively it competes for your attention.)

As excited as I was, the impending trip also filled me with dread. I knew that people and places would not be as I remembered them, and I tried to prepare myself for that. What worried me more was that I would not be as my friends and family remembered me. My appearance had certainly changed - 40+ years of Tatooine sunshine and wind will do a number on your skin, above and beyond the normal ravages of time - but I wasn't sure if I was even the same person inside. The things that were important or familiar to me as a lazy teen had long ago been replaced by concerns about vaporators and atmospheric monitoring and Tusken raiders. What would we even talk about?

On the other hand... what if it turned out to be so great that I didn't ever want to come back to Tatooine, with my run-down old farm, the sorry fish venture, and piles and piles of worthless sand?

All of that worrying had been mostly for nothing. Sure, the whole planet looked completely different from how I remembered it, or even from the old pictures I'd put away long ago. Homes had been refurbished and redecorated; entire city blocks had been transformed over the years; even historical buildings had been renovated just enough to confuse me. My family and the friends I visited were all older, grayer, and shaped differently, and there were new family members I'd never seen before. And indeed, our interests and experiences had diverged greatly over the years. Still, we found no shortage of things to talk about, and except for the first few awkward but giddy moments, it was as if no time had passed at all.

At least not with my family. Meeting with some of my old friends was a different story. There were some pleasant reunions, but there were some weird ones too, including two that were downright unpleasant. One old friend tried to recruit me into his "business" (a pyramid scheme) and another tried to recruit me into her new religion (also something of a pyramid scheme, in my opinion). Those were sad, but they didn't overshadow all the fun I had with my other friends.

I spent most of my time with my cousin, though. She had been told that her condition was terminal, but she demanded treatment anyway, even while she was settling her affairs. She seemed to be as committed to living as she was resigned to dying, but the treatments bought her some time. She wasn't even close to recovering by the end of my visit, but she did seem to be doing a little better.

I worried that being away from Tatooine for so long would cause me to lose focus on the important things in my life, but I could not have been more wrong. It gave me some much-needed objectivity. I realized that the fish farm had been a horrible idea, and that I needed to cut my losses rather than continue to pump money into a losing proposition in hopes of winning it all back at increasingly poor odds. I decided to stop waffling about the droid situation and just buy one that I liked and get it over with.

More important, I figured out something that had never completely dawned on me before: I didn't have to define myself as Naboo or former-Naboo or Career Quest booby-prize winner or moisture farmer or anything else. I was just me, J. Sandstormer (a name I had chosen for myself), doing particular things in a particular place. The past was the past: part of me, but not all of me; only as much of me as I wanted it to be.

When I say it that way, it doesn't sound like anything. Actually, it seems pretty stupid. But it seemed like a major revelation at that moment. Maybe it was the Corellian vodka.

I used my SORAS credits to buy a reconditioned One-Onegee droid. I powered up the new droid at my parents' house, just to test it out. My sisters' kids were curious as to why a farmer needs a second-rate medical droid, and I had a hard time explaining about my shaky hands, but the droid seemed to amuse them. It was weird having it around, though - it seemed out of place. I guess I'm not used to seeing droids mixing with humans socially. After a few hours, I turned the new Onegee off.

It was tough saying goodbye to everyone, but it wasn't as hard as I had expected. Contrary to my fears, my old life had no hold over me at all. I looked forward to returning to Tatooine.

I had second thoughts about that when I got home. The caretaker I hired had done an adequate job of managing the business, but there were messages from a few customers who had some concerns. All the fish had died, and Kane and Dofi didn't know what to do. Luke had finally completed work on his skyhopper, and Beru and Owen were beside themselves with worry (not my problem, actually, but they needed to vent, and I was their favorite person to vent to). Kenobi's friend Fil was MIA. And a gravel storm had done some costly damage to my property - naturally, since I already was dealing with the expense of the caretaker, fish farm, droid fare, etc.

With Onegee II's help, however, I got the farm back into shape quickly, reassured my customers, and mostly fixed the damaged repulsor field myself (I still had to pay someone to do the rest of the repairs, but it wasn't so bad). I then cheered up Beru (Owen can't be cheered, ever), sold my share in the fish farm to Biggs (don't ask), and... get this... started a bowling league. There wasn't anything I could do about Fil, but I thought Kenobi might enjoy a new hobby. (I was wrong, but that's a story for another day.)

I have more to say, but it's getting late. The important thing is, I'm home, I'm sandy and gray and sweaty, and I couldn't be happier.

I'm back

I had to make an unexpected trip to Naboo. There were some good outcomes and some bad ones... but I don't have time to enumerate all of them just now. Updates will be forthcoming over the next few days.

Frame of mind

I may be surrounded by insanity, but I am not insane!

(I hope.)

I have this business customer who is driving me crazy. He has always been high-maintenance, but lately his behavior is off the scale. Every day (EVERY!!! DAY!!!) he comes up with some feeble excuse to interrupt me so that he can inspect my "progress." One day this week, he went so far as to badger me when I was sick in bed. He wanted me to give him the passcode so that he could open up the control panel on one of the vaporators and check the meter. Another time, he demanded to know why I had not set my vaporators to the same settings as some previous farmer he had done business with.

First of all, I don't tell him how to do his job - although someone probably should, since his family ends up re-doing a lot of it.

Second, if he liked the previous farmer so much, he should have been nicer to her. At her going-away party, she told me that she hadn't been able to decide about accepting an offer to relocate to a different planet, until a perfectly-timed paranoid tirade from him about a misplaced piece of office equipment. At that point, she said, she realized how much she wanted to move on.

Third, when he looks at those switches, he only thinks he knows what he's looking at. He thinks that his passing familiarity with residential vaporators makes him an expert on moisture farming. He could not be more wrong.

Fourth, even an expert couldn't tell what all of my vaporator settings are, because I've customized, modified, and retrofitted the controls so many times that they barely resemble the original equipment. (An expert would know that.)

I've never lied to him, nor been late with a shipment before, so I don't know why he keeps looking for trouble at my farm. In fact, I've sometimes been ahead of schedule, and there have been times (quite a few) when I've had to wait for him, for reasons he never saw fit to explain. (Not that I require an explanation. What I'd actually prefer is an apology.) As for the lying - I've had nothing to lie about. At least when I need something from him, I don't wake him up when he's sick and try to fool him with lame subterfuges like "oh, I was just curious."

I would love to tell him to take a hike, or at least take his business elsewhere, but unfortunately he's my biggest customer at the moment. Someday I will land a bigger account (Fixer's would be ideal) and be able to tell this guy to make other arrangements for his moisture needs. Until then, all I can do is grind my teeth and think about some of the more pleasant people I've known in my life, like that teacher who used to beat us on our birthdays.

In other news... hmm... things aren't going well with the fish farm. We don't know what's going wrong, but so far, none of the fish have made it much beyond the baby fishie stage. I have convinced Kane and Dofi to let me call in one of those "know-it-all" expert types. Now I just need to find one.

Also: the droid situation. What a nightmare! On a friend's advice, I checked the law and indeed, I am eligible to accept Onegee's manufacturer's offer of a 10,000 credit as well as the lawsuit settlement, which is still several months away. (You guessed it: that law firm letter I got on Life Day was from SORAS's lawyers, not from the plaintiffs' lawyers as I had originally assumed.)

But I took one look at the SORAS catalog and realized that a 10,000 credit will not get me much, even with free shipping. They do have some "factory reconditioned" models that I could afford with a small loan, but with my biggest customer about to lose his mind I'm afraid to make any big financial commitments at the moment. Especially since the reconditioned droids have a shorter warranty.

Meanwhile, I considered a DIY kit, but my hands just aren't up to the challenge of doing fine mechanical work, especially after a long day of working on the vaporators.

A medium-quality, refurbished droid would mean a shorter workday.

A slightly better droid would mean a shorter workday and a holochess partner.

A reconditioned Onegee with all original modules would mean a shorter workday, a holochess partner, and a nurse, which does come in handy from time to time. But that's out of my price range for now.

I really need a new droid, but until the lawsuit is settled, I'm not sure how much cash (if any) will be coming my way. If I knew that, I could make a smarter decision about which droid to buy. I could get another Onegee now, and the settlement would maybe cover the balance of my loan.

My instincts are telling me to buy a low-end reconditioned droid from SORAS now, and when I get my settlement, I can use the money to upgrade that droid or trade up to a better one.

Now I'm rambling. Sorry about that. It's not every day that I get to make a big purchase like this.

Last item: Owen got a sudden, severe case of desert pneumonia about a week ago. Luckily, he is fine now; and I take back what I said about Luke being useless in a crisis. He said he was just acting on instinct, and that must be true because I am sure he has never had special medical training. He overrode his uncle's grumpy protests that he didn't need to see a doctor, and got him to a clinic in Anchorhead, where they quickly diagnosed the problem and did emergency surgery to repair the damage done to his lungs. Apparently, Owen has the same susceptibility to local germs that Cliegg did; unlike Cliegg, it's been caught and repaired before it's too late.

Knock on sand, that grouch will be around for many years to come.

The best part?

I forgot to mention the best part. Yappy, being a "domestic" droid, has a Bocce interface. That means Beru can finally use Shmi's old appliances again. It's probably also the only reason Owen doesn't hate the dog!

Of dogs and droids

I asked myself, am I having a good time? Is this how I want to spend my entire day? And the answer was no. So I'm taking some time out for a long overdue blog post.

First topic: The fish farm. Kane and Dofi were right about Sandpeople. They're capable of excellent work. The problem is, I when I look at Sandpeople, all I can think of is what happened to Shmi, and the neighbors and friends (including Mary Sue's parents) who were hurt or killed trying to rescue her. I stayed away during most of the construction, but I had to have a conversation with their foreman - or forewoman, I'm not sure if there's a way to tell - when it was time to set up the water supply. I don't speak Huttese, and Sandpeople don't speak Basic, so this meeting was facilitated by Biggs. (It could have been Kane, but Kane tends to editorialize, so I decided to go with the kid.) Hilarity ensued.

Biggs can translate Huttese/Basic, but he can't translate Construction/Moisture Farmer. Even if the Sandguy and I had both been speaking Basic, I think we would have had a hard time. It was made all the more awkward by my inability to hide my concern that he might hit me with a gaffi stick at any time. In retrospect, I think he was more afraid of me than I was of him, because I was so paranoid. But he got the water running, and after a few false starts (it's hard to get viable eggs transported out here) we finally have some little baby fishies.

Now is probably a good time to admit that we, the Darklighters and I, don't know a thing about fish farming. But they didn't know anything about mushroom farming either, and they did extremely well with that. The two of them, Kane especially, believe that you can learn just about anything you need to know by reading about it, and it's better than asking an expert, or as Kane says, "some know-it-all."

I believe that you can learn a lot out of a book, but can a book look at your pool and say "that's not the right shade of murky"? I'd feel better about this project if one of us knew what we were doing.

Second topic: The dog. Shortly before Onegee ran off, Fixer had an old mechanical pet (kind of doglike) for sale at Tosche Station. He hadn't repaired it yet (I was going to say "fixed," but that doesn't seem quite right), so I had the chance to buy it at a discount.

I don't know why I thought I wanted a mechanical pet, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Onegee did the fancy soldering, and soon we had a dog.

The dog really seemed to irritate Onegee, inasmuch as a droid (other than a fussy protocol droid like Shmi's) can be irritated. Whenever the dog approached, Onegee seemed to twitch all over. It was like watching a person with an allergy.

Yappy (as I uncreatively named him) had a strange effect on me too. I didn't get anything done when he was around. Wanting attention and being cute was part of the dog's "personality," but there was more to it than that. Despite his slightly tarnished, but still shiny exterior, he seemed like a real dog to me. I wanted to play with Yappy and keep him happy. (Yes, that was my little rhyme, and I'll thank you not to taunt me with it.)

When Onegee ran away, I wondered if it had something to do with Yappy. Now I know that Onegee was going to run away regardless, but I still wonder why Yappy bothered him so. Maybe conflicting frequencies, or something. Most droids of Onegee's caliber can run and report their own diagnostics, but Onegee wasn't able to communicate so well, due to his defective speech center.

In any case, Yappy was gone before Onegee ran away, because I gave him to Luke, who was thrilled. Owen was less thrilled, but he got over it.

Third topic: Speaking of mechanical pals, RIP poor One-Onegee. He was found. He ran a lot farther than I would have expected on that wheezy old power supply, and was discovered by a researcher who was inspecting a group of Krayt dragon skeletons. I didn't have to pay him a reward, because he foolishly took Onegee to Fixer's for repair, trying to pass him off as his own droid.

Fortunately, when Fixer gave the researcher a chance to revise his story to something that wouldn't get him thrown in jail, he admitted that he had found Onegee clinging (motionlessly, of course, since his power supply had been depleted for weeks) to one of the skeletons' ribs. Actually, the way he demonstrated it to Fixer and Fixer demonstrated to me, it sounds more like he was humping one of the skeletons' ribs.

In any case, I am now in possession of one very defective droid, which I have disassembled and crated per the SORAS instructions. However, I haven't decided yet whether to go with the SORAS offer or the class action lawsuit. (Filing an individual lawsuit wouldn't be feasible, for a lot of reasons.) If I choose the SORAS offer, I can have a brand new droid fairly soon, but I'll have to choose from the existing SORAS line. If I choose the lawsuit, I'll have to wait, and if we win (which seems very likely), my piece of the settlement may be a lot smaller than the value of the SORAS offer, but I'll be able to spend it any way I like - as a down payment on some other manufacturer's new droid, or a used droid, or a DIY kit, or even a human or other sentient assistant.

It's funny - before I got Onegee I didn't think I had a chance of finding a truly helpful droid because the local offerings were so limited. Now I realize that having more choices also means having more chances to make a wrong decision! Readers - if you have any droid information to help me make my choice, please comment.