The key to cat sitting

Cat sitting is easy if you've got the key.

If you've lost it — it's just the cat meowing on one side of the door, and you freaking out on the other.

I'm the neighborhood's designated cat sitter. Until yesterday, the panic episode of my pet-sitting career was when the neighbors across the street left town for two weeks, leaving me to care for their cats — and for the mice and fish the husband forgot to tell me about. Fortunately, their six-year-old yelled "Don't forget the fish" as they drove off down the street, and I investigated.

I feed cats, I pill cats, I let cats in and out. I find cats that have been locked overnight in a bedroom when the wind blew the door shut (phew!). I fill water bowls and I scoop litter.

My latest assignment seemed particularly easy because it involved only one cat, a 20-pound feline that lives contentedly indoors. He has an automatic feeding bowl and water dish, so all I needed to do was pet him, give him a few treats, and shovel the litter every few days.

Yesterday I went in, tossed my keys and purse on the coffee table, sat in a chair, and petted the cat for 20 minutes. I gave him two salmon treats, picked up my purse and keys, and realized that while my keys were on the coffee table, the key to the neighbors' house was missing.

"Meow."

I checked the floor, the counters, and the table tops. I checked the cushions of the chair where I'd been sitting. I dumped the contents of my purse on the floor and went though that. I checked the pockets of my jeans.

"Meow."

No key. The phone number for the neighbors' sister was on the information sheet in the kitchen; she was taking over cat care on the weekend, so I knew she had a key and I could, if all else failed, call her.

"Meow."

By now, it was time for me to leave for yoga class, and I decided to latch the front door from the inside, go out the back way, and leave the back door unlocked. Bad idea. This house has a door that automatically locks. I found myself standing on the back porch, locked out, with the sister's phone number on the info sheet in the kitchen.

"Meow," the cat said.

I went off to yoga class, came back late, and put off trying to locate the sister until this morning. After all, the cat had food and water, and was unlikely to die from lack of petting.

Searching old emails, I was able to find an evite from the neighbors, and, looking at the evite RSVPs spotted a name that sounded like it might be the sister's. Fortunately, she has an unusual last name. Using that, I was able to locate her on Linkedin and find out that she works for a small local law firm.

I called the firm. They greeted me in the usual arms-length business style, telling me that the sister was not available. Fortunately, I knew she was out of the office recovering from eye surgery. So I simply told them I was her brother's cat sitter and had locked the keys in the house with the cat. The person on the phone (who turned out to be the head of the firm) cracked up, and a few minutes later the sister called me back, laughing.

Her husband came over this evening to give me their key, and, sure enough, immediately spotted the original key where it had fallen — under the sofa.

"I was sure the cat had eaten it," he said kindly.

Funny is fun

I put The Mysterious Traveler blog to work yesterday providing a few examples of my humor writing. A Seattle area publication is looking for a columnist to write about home and lifestyle topics in a Dave Barry / Erma Bombeck vein, and I couldn't resist tossing my beret into the ring.

When I left Apple three years ago, my first stop was the 2006 Erma Bombeck writing conference where, as fate would have it, Dave Barry was the keynote speaker. This was at the peak of the snarky, ironic style of humor writing (practiced locally by The Stranger and imitated by The Weekly) and it was heartening to hear someone being just plain old mainstream funny.

Publish Post

John Ross (1947-2009)

I'm sad to report that my friend and technology colleague John Ross died earlier this month. Some of you may have known John as the author of books for O'Reilly and other publishers on computer networking. I suspect more of you knew him as one of the indefagitable organizers and the perennial emcee of the Band Scramble at the annual Northwest Folklife Festival.

I don't believe there's been an official obituary for John published yet, but you can follow the discussion of the sad news at the Mudcat Cafe website. (Mudcat's a group of people involved in the preservation and study of recorded music.)

I had the privilege of doing a bit of work with John on wireless networking issues for the Mac when he was expanding a book, originally for PC users, to a cross-platform audience. He also gave me much earnest advice on how to make a living as writer.

John's enthusiasm for folk music and knowledge and homemade cider will be remembered. A Celtic Band Scramble is planned in his memory at this year's Folklife (3:30-4 p.m. Sunday, Northwest Court Stage); I hope there will also be a somewhat less raucous gathering at another point.

Goats, chickens, and cats

This blog post is brought to you at 5 a.m. courtesy of Sheba, the deaf white cat, who went out with the Stripe Sisters a few minutes ago and now refuses to come in. So I'm waiting for her to get bored with the great outdoors so I can go back to sleep.

It's still quite dark out, but the paper's been delivered and the trees are filled with hundreds of twittering birds, reminding me of dinner Thursday evening at Jim and Sharon's. Their enclosed back porch was filled with young chickens that make the most wonderful sounds, a cross between clucking and chittering. Very soothing. There are also two small goats, brought in at night, and some of the chickens roost on top of the goats, which don't seem to mind at all.

I took this photo from their living room, which has a glass door looking into the porch area. The goats were posing.

Jim is building an enormous chicken coop — about twice the size of my garden shed, and far more elaborate — to house the chickens when they are full grown. They got a door for the coop from the ReStore, which reccles building material from houses; the chickens have a blue Tudor style door with leaded glass side panels.

Just what I need

This is the old orange tom cat that would like to live in the cat area under my office. In this photo, he's sleeping on some decking in the backyard; I got the shot with from about 20 feet away, in the house, as he's likely to run off if I open the door.

I should have gotten a shot of the old Lynxpoint Himalayan tom cat that also would like to live in the cat area under my office. In recent months the two of them have worn a path from the side yard to the sheltered area outside the basement where I have a fleece cat bed in a box.

It's gotten so that Kaylee and Zoe and Sheba cast annoyed glances to the left as soon as they walk out onto the back porch; they do not seem to like sharing the yard.

Both tomcats seem well-fed and reasonably healthy. The Himalayan has been around the neighborhood for several years, and has fathered some Lynxpoint kittens, now adult. The orange tom seems to be new to the street. I'm curious to see if I'll be able to tame one or both. I don't dare put out any food for them for fear of attracting raccoons. But I think I'll start putting out a dish of water in the morning when the weather gets warmer.

Any ideas for names?

What weekend?

I swear, I can't remember anything I did Saturday!

Oh, wait: I pruned my cookbook collection and am getting rid of some books on cooking with chocolate, and some old books on coffee and tea. (Everyone's a coffee expert these days, and the only tea I'm passionate about is Assam, aka Irish and English Breakfast.)

The Easter Bunny arrived mid-afternoon, and this year, I caught him hanging the bag of Peeps on the front door! This is, I believe, the 15th year of Easter Bunny visits. He came in and we had tea and caught up.

In the evening I went to visit a friend in the hospital, and then Tom and I had Greek food at Santorini's in Kirkland. The moussaka was just OK but the lamb souvlaki ($3.50 for a long skewer of big, lean chunks of lamb) was delicious. Found out about Santorini's from the excellent website Chef Seattle, which has a list of Cheap Eats for foodies. The list even has a French restaurant! And I wasn't surprised to find Fu Man Dumpling House at in second place on the (ranked) list. To my surprise, the top-ranked eaterie was one I'd never heard of: La Casa Del Mojito, on Lake City Way.

Sunday I visited Nina in Bellingham; we had lunch, went shopping, and came home and looked at Mexican recipes and drank Chai. Listened to Jonathan Edwards CDs on the way up, and Flanders and Swann CDs on the way back. Discover that the new Fit can really move! Its disappointing in-city gas usage is a real contrast to highway performance, which was better than 40 mpg.

Last night watched the Star Trek classic "The City on the Edge of Forever," which, according to the most recent Locus magazine, writer Harlan Ellison is still suing the producers about. At some point I want to read the original Ellison story on which the final script, edited by DC Fontana, is based.

Signs and sounds of spring

Sunday was the first truly warm day of spring; I had yoga class with Susan in Fremont at noon, then caught the end of the Ballard Sunday Market (Turkish bread, Gouda cheese, steampunk fashion). Came home and opened up the French doors and aired out the house. Movie plans in the evening ended up being just hanging out at Hank's with Tom, Bruce, and Margaret, eating Hank's Firehouse Lasagna and watching "The Emperor's New Groove" (2000), a delightful, little-known Disney animation.

I still haven't managed to see "Coraline."

The neighbors across the street got a dog, a very sweet middle-aged chocolate Lab. Their kids are thrilled; their cats look incredulous.

Feline frolics

Got home from yoga tonight and was nearly bowled off the front porch by a cat -- a big orange tom that had been sleeping in the front-porch cat tree. He saw me and exploded out of the cat tree and tore down the steps.

Zoe and Sheba were sitting in the window, watching all this, and they were clearly ready to pursue him into the night — if I'd let them out. Which I didn't.

Now we're all having some French Toast for dinner and cooling down.

Trailer Park Yoga classes April - June

Susan Powter is back in town and her women's yoga classes are starting up again: Monday, Wednesday, Friday evenings and Sunday noon in Fremont. (Contact me for specifics.) Payment is by the individual class (i.e., drop-in). The first class is a free "tryout." Bring a yoga mat, water, and -- if you have them -- a set of light wrist or ankle weights. You can start the program at any point.

I think Susan's classes are great because they are do-able, entertaining, and extremely effective for transforming fat into muscle. Most people lose weight, but everyone who does her classes loses inches. The classes are based on a Vinyasa yoga workout, but the emphasis is on breathing and on developing strength, endurance, and flexibility.

This is by no means a class for skinny Barbie dolls. A good number of the women in the class are obese to the point that it affects their mobility. There are also a number of women (like me) who work around physical injuries. Susan offers modifications that can work for everyone.

But, to be honest with you, this program isn't meant for everybody.

• The program won't yield exciting results if you only exercise twice a week. Not quite sure what the "magic formula" is, but if your only exercise is this class, twice a week, you'll get some initial effect, but then hit a plateau. To get a great fitness effect, you have do three 90-minute classes a week, or do two of these plus one other aerobic/strength workout during the week. (I'll probably be doing two or three of Susan's classes and a belly dance class; we have other folks who play soccer, or run.)

• You have to be able to modify, doing the versions of the poses that are comfortable for you and working up to the more difficult ones. If you insist on doing everything perfectly right away, you'll turn bright red like a lobster and then hate the class. I've learned that there are people who simply can't modify for fear of being criticized (apparently by some nasty gym teacher in their distant past); this program isn't for them.

What's going on in Ballard

Male cats. That's what's going on around my house. A big long-haired lynx-point and a wiry short-hair orange cat are prowling the street, circling through my back yard several times a day. Sheba, the deaf white cat, seems indignant. Zoe, the big tabby, is eager to take them on. Kaylee, the little tabby, is manifestly unhappy, and now stays in at night. She takes shelter under the kitchen table and watches with incredulity as Zoe gallumphs down the back steps to check out the action.

I've been working like crazy, and have only recent caught up on the local blogs. Anchor Tattoo is now offering a tattoo design of Edith Macefield's house. She was the woman who refused to sell her house on NW 46th to developers, remaining in the tiny bungalow while a massive commercial building was constructed surrounding her place on three sides and towered over it. According to the My Ballard blog, seven or eight people have selected the design, including a Ballard barista.

Downtown Ballard has been hit by a string of burglaries and police may have caught one of the burglars — with two storage lockers full of loot.

The Tux Shop on Market has moved, and the word is that Buffalo Exchange (clothes for the 20-somethings) and a BECU branch will be moving in. Great timing, that, because I've been thinking of taking my savings out of WAMU-going-to-be-JP-Morgan-Chase and putting it into BECU.

10 reasons why I'm not blogging as much

1. I'm blogging for three clients' sites.
2. I'm dealing with an unusual number of clients.
3. I'm publishing some complex websites for friends using iWeb, while editing a friend's book on iWeb '09.
4. I moved my professional blog to WordPress and am learning the ropes with that software; I'd describe it as powerful but surly.
5. I've taken on a strange project that involves advising on the re-launch of a fairly large commercial website.
6. I'm still trying to figure out what to do about getting out of organizing a Meetup I inherited.
7. I've been going to science fiction and writing conventions on weekends.
8. I've been going out to social activities.
9. I twitter many of the smaller things I used to blog.
10. I use Facebook at bit more often.

How about you? Do you blog as much as you used to?

Divorce, dim sum, and whirling felines

The two tabbies just brought in a moth from the back yard and are now pursuing it through the hallways. A few minutes ago, Sheba, the deaf white cat, stood on the tiptoes of all four paws, and chased her tail -- first clockwise, and then counterclockwise.

I'm tempted to join Sheba. My clients, apparently sensing that I'd like to spend my evenings writing fiction (trying to fix the story that got savaged in the workshop at Potlatch this past weekend) are deluging me with interesting work.

Other aspects of my life have been similarly active.

My mother has decided she wants to go into a continuing care community with her friends in Florida instead of the one she had planned to move into out here in Seattle. It makes sense. If she carries through on this, I'll be flying back East three or four times a year to visit. I realized that having her settle in Florida (rather than out here, near me) would make it easier for me to relocate to a warmer climate, which I'd like to do in a few years.

As some of you know, Zorg and I have been hammering out a separation agreement for the past six months. He signed it last week, and I signed today, realizing as I did that this was, essentially "it." In Washington state, the separation contract is the major legal event, going into great detail about division of property and setting forth various agreements. The dissolution of marriage paperwork, filed subsequently, is comparatively short and straightforward.

We've managed to get through things in a civilized fashion. To our friends, who have been supportive and diplomatic through it all: Thank you!

In the midst of all this, I flew down to the Bay Area last week for the Potlatch 18 science fiction convention. Each convention has its own personality, and Potlatch's is "unstructured." There was only one panel track, with very light programming, but lots of spontaneous get-togethers called Algonquins that get posted a few hours in advance on the bulletin board at registration. I missed the chance to go to the computer museum to see the Babbage machine in action, but got a small group to go to Lunatic Fringe (belly dancing supplies) and took the introductory jewelry-making class taught by Elise Matthiessen. The class was extraordinarily good (earrings and pendant in one hour!) and I discovered the craft is much more my style than knitting or sewing. Bead stores, here I come!

Potlatch is, of course, a literary convention. I was on a panel about Good Reads, talking about books that included Octavia Butler's Fledgling and Robert Charles Wilson's Spin. And I surived my first short-story critique -- discouraging but extremely useful.

The people at Potlatch were fascinating. It was difficult to get to anything scheduled in a timely fashion because I kept getting distracted by introductions and conversations. There were also some wonderful meals at nearby restaurants. Chelokababi's chicken with sour cherries (Albaloo polo) was the best dish of the weekend, though the dim sum at The Mayflower in Milpitas was the most entertaining meal. One member of our party used an iPhone app with pictures of dim sum (Yum Yum Dim Sum) to get us some arcane and amazing dishes.

Kindle for the iPhone

Just downloaded the (free) Kindle app for iPhone and am now downloading my first read, Andrea Camilleri's mystery The Voice of the Violin.

If I like reading on the iPhone as much as I've been enjoying playing quick Scrabble on it, this will be life-changing.

The Metropolitan Hot Club

At last! Thanks to YouTube, I can listen to Mike Snow play jazz violin.









Reunions

For several years now, I've been reading the work of a certain Seattle Post-Intelligencer writer. I knew she was a friend one of my colleages from Apple's short-lived Seattle office. Tonight, via a Facebook search on my high school, I discovered that this woman and I attended the same high school in Northern Virginia, and had graduated only a year apart.

I sent her a note, and she replied mentioning a teacher we'd had who had particularly influenced her. Which was odd, because today I had been speaking Chinese ("Ni hao ma!") and my mother asked where I'd learned it. I'd learned it from that teacher, who'd been a POW in China.

I'm astonished that she and I don't remember each other from high school. We had both identified ourselves as writers early on, and today, as book reviewers, we specialize in the same genre of fiction.

We're planning to get together for coffee later this month. Should be interesting!

The Mysterious Traveler sets out yet again

Sunday I'm off to Florida for my annual visit to my mom, leaving behind me a pile of washed-but-un-ironed laundry, and a sheaf of notes for the housesitter.

Work finally slowed down this week, but many clients have come out of the woodwork to book projects for the week I get back. That is great news in terms of money, but I wonder if I've committed to too much. Fortunately, much of the work is quite interesting.

I'm continuing to try to get a grip on the Weblogger Meetup that I've been organizing for the past year after inheriting the leadership of the group from a friend who had a much greater talent for it. Currently I'm surveying the group members to figure out what would make the event more appealing to them. They are just about evenly divided on every aspect of the survey except one: None of them wants to be involved in organization or leadership of the group -- except for one dear woman who is already one of the most overcommitted people on the planet. Isn't that always the way it goes?

My friend Tom, who is also one of those natural-born organizers, has been working with me to host a monthly games party at the house. We've had a couple of trial runs, fairly successful, in which I've discovered that my taste in free-form word games is balanced by other folks' taste in more structured adventure games. Fortunately, the house can easily accommodate four groups at a time. We've played Settlers of Cataan (sp?), The Great Dalmuti, Wise and Otherwise, Scrabble, Chronology, Fluxx, Apples to Apples, and Chronology -- plus a game in which we were constructing a haunted house as we went along. I think The Great Dalmuti is my favorite.

If you'd like to be added to the invite list for the next party (most likely on a Sunday afternoon/evening in March) please send email and let me know.

Home from Macworld

I expect to be writing more about Macworld and San Francisco in the next few days, as I unpack, but at the moment my attention is fully occupied by the things I found upon arriving home.

I opened the front door and there, on the rug in the foyer, was a Beanie Baby walrus. The cats, it turned out, had taken half a dozen Beanie Babies out of a basket on an upstairs dresser and brought them downstairs. One of the tabbies had been sitting in the front window when I arrived home, and the other appeared soon after. I had to hunt for Sheba, the deaf white cat, and found her curled up in a cabinet in the bathroom; she'd unspooled a roll of paper towels, created a nest of sorts, and was sleeping in it.

The cats seem perfectly happy, even though this was the longest I've ever left them with catsitters. A friend who has a pet-sitting business had come by every evening for a couple of hours, and neighbors with whom I exchange cat-sitting services had popped in each morning to give the cats some wet food and make sure nothing had been demolished. The system seems to have worked -- perhaps because it's winter, so they aren't as interested in getting outside when the weather is cold and wet.

There was an immense heap of mail waiting for me. I'd cancelled the P-I for the duration of the trip (no, I was not the straw the broke the camel's back), but Wall Street Journals had piled up. And there were some wonderful letters from friends responding to Christmas cards and gifts. There were also some checks from clients -- nearly as wonderful!

It's so good to be home!

Macworld, Day 1

I did not attend the final, non-Steve, keynote this morning, but followed it on Twitter while eating breakfast at Sears Restaurant and then waiting in line to get into the Exhibition Hall. (Yes! IDG, the firm that runs Macworld, finally got excellent ATT reception and WiFi throughout the Moscone conference facility.)

One Tweet was from Matt, a fellow iCards alumus, asking me if I had the new-product cards ready to go live. That triggered some unpleasant flashbacks of keynote Tuesdays, spent dashing from the Exhibition Hall in SF to the office in Cupertino, and back.

I spent an hour in the South Hall -- which is the main exhibition area with the Apple booth -- before heading off for a lunch date at Mel's Drive-In (which is not a drive-in). The Apple booth itself was much sparser than in previous years. It was U-shaped, with the big-screen presentation theater in the middle (showing off new elements in iWork and iLife) and a one-on-one demo bar. At one side of the U was a modest table with the new 17" Mac Book Pro, and at the other side were tables with iPhones and iPods.

Lunch with with Dan, a Seattle friend who now lives in Tennessee and is part of the team that produces Your Mac Life and is currently onsite at Macworld. We chatted about a whole range of things, including our excitement over Rae's engagement to Todd. (An amusing topic because Dan met Rae through The Mysterious Traveler Sets Out, which links to Rae's blog.)

I arrived back at Moscone to discover that Tom, a Berkeley/Seattle friend, had jumped in and helped out at a booth to the extent that he'd been given $50 worth of merchandise as a thank you. He'd also discovered that a friend of his, at Google, was demoing a Google Earth add-on that lets you steer the Google milk truck while surfing on a hacked Wii balance board. I went over and surfed on it, and can hardly wait to get one. There is no penalty for speeding!

I made it to the Kensington booth to shop for what is to be my one technology purchase for the trip: a wireless (USB) mouse. Several of the mice were quite flat, but one was more egonomically curved, and I'm going to use the show discount to order it on line (or pick it up at the Dr. Bott store at Moscone tomorrow).

As usual, a day tromping around Moscone was exhausting. I'm back at the hotel, getting ready to go over to meet my cousin Michael and his fiance at a new restaurant, Orson.

Getting silly

For the first time in a couple of months, I can see my way past the pile of projects I've promised to deliver to clients. I worked all weekend, and now, having warned everyone I'm headed off to Macworld, have stopped committing to completing anything else before the trip.

Todd, over at Life 2.0, is also a bit behind schedule. But, like him, I found this just too much fun to pass up:

1. Egg nog or hot chocolate?
Eggnog, very cold, mixed half and half with cold milk (to cut the sweetness). And I like the whole thing chilled in the freezer for half an hour. Lots of fresh-grated nutmeg on top.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Wrapped. Wrapping is what it's all about.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
White. Unblinking. I still have an extra-long string that works perfectly for a 6-foot tree.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
No. I confuse it with holly, anyway.

5. When do you put your decorations up?
7-10 days before Christmas. I once had a tree dry out on me, and now I'm paranoid.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)?
Scalloped potatoes (no onions, no cheese, just lots of cream and butter) with a really great Smithfield ham. My Aunt Arv's Swedish meatballs are a close second.

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child?
Er...the year my dad gave my mom the two scrub brushes he'd spray-painted silver. Long story. Also: Caroling with my high school friends in a long green velveteen coat my mom had made for me.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
I figured it out. No one who looked like that could possibly fit down our chimney.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
Yes. That was the tradition in my dad's family.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree?
Lights, tinsel garlands, then one-of-a-kind ornaments. Most of my ornaments are unbreakable, due to the cats. I have a lot of natural looking animals, but am now interested in glittery, beaded decorations.

11. Snow! Love it or dread it?
I love snow, right up to the point that it turns into ice. Then, I hate it.

12. Can you ice skate?
Yes. But it gives my feet cramps.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
Not really. I think my favorite gifts have been associated with travel or visits, not with holidays or special occasions.

14. What's the most important thing about the holidays for you?
It's a time to get in touch with friends and relatives who live far away, and to look back on the year and put events in perspective. I also like having days when I don't work, drive, run errands -- you get the idea. A walk around the neighborhood on Christmas day is wonderful.

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert?
My mom's spritz cookies. This year she absolutely out-did herself.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Singing "Lyssna," a Swedish carol my grandfather's church choir recorded. I found the 78 tucked away in cover for The Messiah in my Dad's LP collection, and had it made into MP3s for my cousins this year!

17. What tops your tree?
Some years, the traditional pointed ornament. If it doesn't fit, I put a Mexican tin mermaid atop the tree.

18. Which do you prefer giving or receiving?
Both! I love picking out, wrapping, and delivering presents. Getting them can be a bit weird, but every year there's one item I just love.

19. What is your favorite Christmas song?
"Good King Wenceslas."

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum?
Purely for decoration.

21. What do you want for Christmas?
Peace on earth, of course!

Merry Christmas to all

and to all, a good night!

Oy to the world

Along with pretty much everyone else in the Seattle-Portland area, I am not having the holiday season I had expected!

Instead of partying and shopping, I've been at home with three cats, all of us suffering from cabin fever. This morning the little tabby ventured out into the snow on the back stairs, took five steps on the icy crust, broke through, panicked, and tumbled down the steps. She somehow exploded out of the drift at the foot of the stairs and made it back into the house. So I went out and shoveled the front and back porches, connecting them with a path, so the cats can at least go outside and give me some peace.

Since the cold and snow set in, the little tabby has peed in my office several times, and the deaf white cat has shoved a full cup of tea off my desk onto the floor and ripped the metal grating off the heater vent. The big tabby has just been yowling, and that may be because little sister has been attacking her. Every few hours I hear snarling and yowling and they go rolling through the house like something out of a barroom brawl in a bad Western.

I went out briefly Friday to take a package to the package shipping place on Market St., and ventured down 65th (with the car!) yesterday to get a small noble fir. How small? At 6', it fit into the passenger section of my fit, with the far window open. The tree is now lit and decorated and, fortunately, of very little interest to the cats.

This evening a friend who has chains and front-wheel drive is coming by to take me to a small get-together a few miles north. I'm taking no chances:I'm bringing along a change of clothes, just in case I get snowed in, and my sealskin boots in case I have to hike home through the drifts. And I'll be leaving out big bowls of dry food for the cats.

Adventures in snow

A frigid wind is blasting the snow off the trees in Ballard this afternoon.

Before I forget, I want to write about how pretty it all was at 8:30 this morning when I shoved my purse in a backpack, put on a hooded down coat and fleece-lined boots, and tromped down from Sunset Hill into Ballard.

The air was still, and the snowflakes were big and slow and quiet. For several blocks, mine were the only foot prints -- though I did see tracks on my street that were either a galloping cat or a bunny rabbit. (More on cats later.)

Two golden retrievers with red collars came bounding around the corner, very cute until they ran up to me and tried to tug my sheepskin gloves off! The embarrassed owner came around the corner a minute later, and shooed them away.

I went down to Vera's (where I was to have met two friends, who cancelled because of they snow) and ordered breakfast. Only one cook had made it in to work, so they were considering closing up. A fellow with a huge backpack came in and, after the harried waitress dashed by, asked me how the food was. I said "good," and peered at him. He looked familiar.

"San Francisco?" he asked.

"Baggage claim!" I said.

He remembered my name, while all I remembered was that he plays banjo. Two years ago we'd met at baggage claim at the San Francisco airport, and discovered we knew the same folks in Bellingham, where he was then living. I'd planned to take a cab into the city, but he'd offered me a ride in his rental car. Which I gratefully accepted.

This morning he joined me at my table. We chatted about Obama and the news media, and I bought him breakfast in return for the ride two years ago. Turns out he's now living on a sailboat at Shilshole, working in Seattle, and spending weekends in Portland where his wife just got a job.

After breakfast I ran some errands, then hiked back to Sunset Hill. The weather was turning a bit nasty by then: Colder, and windy, and then the snow started in again.

I've put in a fairly good day's work today, and could have done even more except for the cats, who were massively bored. They went out in the snow, briefly, and then came in and demolished the house. Giving them catnip distracted them for a while, but led to a second, wilder, round of demolition. I dread being snowed in with them all weekend.

Cold weather, followed by big trouble

The Weather Underground forecast for Seattle says "coldest weather since December 1990 expected during the week ahead."

I remember that December in 1990. I'd gone to Florida to visit family and, unbeknownst to me, the friend driving me to the airport had thoughtfully closed the door between my kitchen and basement, so that the heat couldn't down get to the basement.

Oops. The pipes in the basement then froze.

When a second friend, taking care of the cats, arrived to feed the cats the following day, he noticed that the water was running very, very slowly. So he drove to work on the other side of the lake and then called me in Florida to tell me about the water.

I freaked out. Particularly when he assured me that the kitchen door to the basement had been closed.

I then called a third friend, who rushed over, turned up the heat, opened the door to the basement, got into the basement crawl space, and managed to defrost the pipes before they burst. He then wrapped them with a heating device that turned on when the temperature dropped below 35.

I've only been in the current house for six years. It has a lot of new pipes installed seven years ago, and during the kitchen remodel, that have never been tested in cold weather. Yep, I'm worried.

According to The Straight Dope, letting an interior faucet drip will, in all but the most arctic weather, prevent pipes from freezing. Yes, it wastes water. But it is much cheaper than dealing with the damage from burst pipes.

February's the real party season

This is the time of year when you usually hear people talking about holiday parties. But, oddly, I'm finding people that many people are enthusiastically planning inauguration parties.

"This time, there's really something to celebrate," my friend Ross Taylor said.

In D.C., they're planning several days of celebrating, with January 19 to be a work-service day commemorating the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday. The swearing-in is January 20, but a time is not yet set for the ceremony. Need info? You can sign up for updates at the inauguration website/blog.

Ross is having people over to watch the swearing-in and then having a post-inauguration brunch (though, being on Seattle time, it may be more like a late lunch). Signature drink? Pompagne (pictured above). Here's his recipe:

Rub the rim of a martini glass with lemon, and rim the glass with sugar.

Then fill the glass with 2/3 champagne and 1/3 organic pomegranate juice.

Garnish with fresh pomegranate seeds and a twist of lemon.

The gift of restoration and preservation

Today was my parents' 60th wedding anniversary. For the past few years, I've been sending my mom anniversary cards with images from my dad's slide collection. This year's card has a photo of my parents in the Mojave Desert, where they worked on a Navy base during World War II.

Converting my dad's slides to digital images was one of the best moves I ever made (it was something like 20 cents per slide).

This year I'm having my grandfather's choir's record of Christmas carols (a 78 rpm disk) converted into music CDs for all my cousins. The work is being done by a Shoreline business called Precision Audio Restoration, which offers not only restoration of the audio, but beautiful graphics for the CD and CD case. I'd been planning this project for years, but ran into difficulty when the original record disappeared. We found it this summer, carefully stored inside the box for The Messiah in my dad's LP collection. (Which makes sense, if you think about it: Christmas music.)

My errands today included a stop at Annie's Art and Frame in Ballard, where they worked with me to pick out mats and a frame for a delicate Japanese-style limited edition print from the 1930s. Apparently there's still plenty of time to get stuff framed for Christmas -- they promised my piece, which is fairly complicated, would be ready in a week. (Annie's also has the most wonderful stocking stuffers and Christmas cards!)

I've resolved to take more photos this year, and to record more audio and video, so I can give people truly personalized gifts next year.

Steampunk at Orycon

• hat from antique shop in Edmonds
• dress from one of the contragals (via a Naked Ladies party)
• corset from Xcentricities
• boots by Corso Como

Joe is looking for Michele Wolf

Joe Hage, a marketing strategy executive for whom I'm do writing and editing, is putting social media channels to work in an attempt to find an old friend of his. Her name, Michele Wolf, is common enough that she's difficult to find through the usual channels such as Classmates.com or LinkedIn.

Joe's asked friends and colleagues to help out by linking to his blog post about Michele. Search engine optimization spiders will then push this highly linked post to the top of the search engines whenever someone (he hopes Michele herself) Googles her name.

Thanksgiving resolutions

I don't care how many projects I have piling up, I'm going to forget about them all day tomorrow. Except to be thankful for having all that paying work and some great clients.

Have a lovely Thanksgiving. If you're stressing out at all, give a thought to the Twitter friend of mine who went to brine his turkey today and found the cooler he'd used for brining the Easter ham still had brine in it...that, and a massive colony of mold.

November is flying by

This month is just flying by...I can't believe it's Thanksgiving this coming week. 

Just took a three-day weekend to go to Orycon in Portland. It was my first large convention, and the first one where there was costuming. I couldn't resist that challenge, and brought down three steampunk outfits that went over extremely well. All of them featured Edwardian jewelry that had belonged to my grandmother.

The costumes at Orycon fell into four categories: Renaissance/Regency, space opera/superhero, fantasy/furry, and steampunk/pirate. With some interesting crossovers.

While it was fun to go parading around in costumes and getting photographed, I discovered that doing a con in costume has a couple of drawbacks. One is that you have to schlep a bunch of costumes, including boots and hats, to and from the hotel. The other is that you spend quite a bit of time talking with folks about costumes, and that means you have less time to talk with other people about reading, writing, science, politics, etc.

In the future, I'll probably alternate between going to cons as a reader/writer, as a concom volunteer, and as a costumer.

Pictures tomorrow.

A few leaves left

Busy! Realized I'd better take a fall picture or two, even if it's just with the iPhone:

One step closer to "crazy cat lady" status

You don't become a "crazy cat lady" overnight. It sort of creeps up on you, one cat at a time, and then pounces, knocking things over, and somehow you never get around to picking things up again. You're too busy opening cans of cat food, and tossing catnip mice.

I've been to the brink (owning six cats at one point) but now have only three (well, three and one that lives with a neighbor but has vet coverage through me).

What I'm discovering is that you can attain "crazy cat lady" status with only three cats if the three cats are crazy themselves.

My cats are pretty crazy at the moment. The transition from sunny summer to rainy fall is always tough for energetic indoor/outdoor felines, and the deaf white cat, Sheba, is having a particularly bad time of it this year. Having the painters here for a week, which entailed moving her cat tree and other perches out of the livingroom, diningroom, and hall, clearly put her over the edge.

Saturday I found her in the bathroom, up on the counter. She'd unrolled most of a roll of paper towels from under the cabinets onto the counter, and had made a nest out of the towels. The nest was hidden behind the few towels that remained dangling from the roll. When I saw Sheba in the kitchen a bit later, I headed for the bathroom to clean up the mess of towels. There was something heavy in the nest, which turned out to be Zoe, the big tabby.

Later I heard yowling and found Sheba back in the nest. She'd unrolled the rest of the towels and was staring mournfully at the empty cardboard roll over head.

When I finally found the nest empty, I removed the towels and put down a somewhat more attractive looking towel. A few hours later I found Kaylee, the tiny tabby, had take up residence on the towels. And when I went to take a shower this morning, she was still sleeping there.

I now have no counter space on which to put magazines and a box of Kleenex because the space is taken up by a cat bed. And I don't dare put up a fresh roll of paper towels.

Instead, I've moved the cat trees and other perches back into the living room and dining room in the hopes that Sheba and the tabbies will gradually forget about the towel in the bathroom. Unfortunately, the towel is directly across from a heat outlet, so it may remain cat territory through the winter.

It's my fault if he got a parking ticket

Last night a bunch of us headed up to Town Hall for what Hank had billed as "the Jonathan Coulton concert." It was raining fairly steadily, and parking was difficult. We ended up two blocks north of Town Hall, and paid $6 to park in a tiny lot near Virginia Mason -- this after peering at signs that seemed to indicate that most of the street parking required a local resident permit after 6 p.m. We didn't want to risk it.

As we sloshed across the street toward the concert, we saw a dark Mercedes swoop into the "permit only" spot. A conservative-looking man in an expensive trench coat hopped out of the car and hurried off down the hill, carrying an oblong canvas violin case. He seemed somehow familiar, but who did we know who wore a trench coat and played violin? The fellow seemed to be headed to Town Hall, which was even more confusing, since Coulton's band has never included a violinist. Tom considered warning the man about the parking permit requirement, but by now he was far ahead of us, and there was something well-heeled and arrogant about him that made us think he could probably afford the ticket if he got one.

The Coulton "concert" turned out to be Coulton appearing in a supporting role for John Hodgman's book tour. Hodgman, the hapless PC in the Apple commercials, has just come out with More Information Than You Require, a second book of humorous essays.

Hodgman read from the book while engaging in a mock dispute with Coulton -- a set-up that led to Hodgman bringing on stage a possible replacement for the shaggy Coulton -- the even shaggier John Roderick of the Seattle rock band Long Winters. Coulton responded by introducing a possible replacement for Hodgman -- the even more dapper Sean Nelson of the Seattle rock band Harvey Danger. Roderick performed, Nelson performed with Coulton, Roderick and Nelson performed (wild cheers from the crowd), and then Hodgman went backstage and emerged with a ukelele. (Thanks to iamdonte on Flickr for the photo shown here.)

As he led the ensemble in a rendition of "Tonight You Belong to Me," we exchanged looks: John Hodgman was going to get a parking ticket.

When the Q&A period came, I considered going up to the microphone and warning him. But I couldn't imagine myself saying "John, my question is: Did you know your car is parked illegally?"

When the event ended and book signings began, Tom did go up and tell one of the event organizers about the car situation. We noticed on the way back to the parking lot that what seemed to be the same car was still there, as yet unticketed. And, if the Seattle parking folks did catch up with him later in the evening, perhaps he'll have a Seattle parking ticket story to add to his "minor television celebrity" tales.

$200 ocarina

A new third-party app for the iPhone lets you play it as an ocarina by blowing into the microphone and then fingering the "holes" that appear on the touchscreen.

Visit the developer's site to see a video of an iPhone ocarina ensemble performing "Stairway to Heaven." This just has to win an "app of the year" award.

Amazon addresses "wrap rage"

I once called the manufacturers of Sheba's electronic cat-locator collars to complain about the heavy plastic clamshell packaging they use. When you attempt to open one of the clamshell packages using scissors, it splits and shatters into razor-sharp shards of plastic. Of course, the components of the electronic collar remain securely lodged (and taped) in various crevasses of the broken molded plastic.

The customer service rep who answered my call was not particularly sympathetic. She put me on hold while she located a package and scissors. She then got back on the call and started to open the package. I heard little scream, as she was stabbed by a piece of hard plastic. "You're right!" she gasped. "I'm bleeding."

It was hard to be sympathetic.

With a stash of 40 unopened cat-locator collars in the basement, I was delighted to read that Amazon.com has announced a collaboration with manufacturers to eliminate "wrap rage" (yes, it has a Wikipedia listing, which attributes the phrase to Consumer Reports) by the creation of "frustration-free" package. One of the first products to launch is toy pirate ship.

Meanwhile, they are collecting and displaying videos of "wrap rage" experiences — feel free to contribute!

Blog goodness

My friend Rae turned me on to a charming blog co-written by a pair of women in their 80s, with some of the best political writing I've seen online since Molly Ivins passed away. (Oh, what Molly would have done with Sarah Palin's candidacy!)

I'm feeling cheerful about blogging today. A reporter from a major news publication came across something I wrote in Mysterious Traveler a few weeks ago, emailed me, and then interviewed me for a trend story that's scheduled to appear in November. If I'm quoted, you'll be among the first to know. (My Twitter peeps will probably hear about it first.)

Nice that my online life is going well. Wish I could say the same for physical reality. A team of Salvadoran house painters is sanding and priming the living room and dining room...their paint prep work is good, but they didn't cover the buffet, and then plonked a bunch of Venetian blinds on it. Grrrrrr.

What's on the table

This weekend I made an apple strudel with fruit from the columnar apple tree. The recipe, from Cook's Illustrated, included peeled, sliced apples, raisins simmered in Calvados, toasted pecans, lemon juice, and a bit of sugar. You wrap the filling in five buttered sheets of filo dough, score the roll, and bake at 475 for 15 minutes. Cool, slice, then sprinkle with confectioner's sugar. Pretty easy.

I got a new tablecloth for fall at the local consignment shop, Imagine That. Unfortunately, Zoe found it before I put it away, so now it needs to be washed.

I've been swamped with work, including one particularly complicated website catalog that goes on, and on, and on.

My mom is preparing to depart for her winter in Florida (Thursday) and that'll be about the time that the painters arrive to do the living room, dining room, and hallways in exciting new colors. (Well, not exactly exciting, but certainly less neutral neutrals.) Preparing for that will involve moving all the window treatments, pictures, and breakables to the basement, including all the china from the china cabinet. Unfortunately, the previous owners used high-gloss on the window trim, baseboards, and five doors. That will have to be sanded in order for the new semi-gloss to adhere properly, which drove the bids up a bit. After the professionals do the more visible rooms, I'll be tackling the yoga room and bathroom painting myself.

Green light

Lighting at the house took a big step backward this week. The $300 Rejuvenation Lighting fixture with the GU24 incandescent bulb purchased last year was going dim. I removed the bulb and saw scary burn damage where the glass meets the head of the bulb. A call to the 1-800 number for the bulb manufacturer revealed that the GU24 bulb isn't supposed to be used in conjunction with a light sensor, which I'd been using. (Boo! to the electricians, who seemingly hadn't been aware of that when they installed the fixture and the sensor.)

A call to Rejuvenation with questions initially got the answer that it should work with a light sensor, but as we discussed it further, they decided that if I was using a light sensor in the house wiring, I'd need the model of that fixture that takes an incandescent bulb. They then immediately offered to replace my year-old fixture with a new one. So, while I won't be saving the environment using a fluorescent bulb, I will at least be saving it using a light sensor.

Apple TV, demystified

I don't exactly watch TV. Certainly not in the traditional sense. Network TV is something I see and overhear in bars, or at the airport. Cable TV is something other people have that I see if they've recorded something to TiVo.

I just bought a 32" flat screen TV (laughably small, I'm told) so I can watch new DVDs and old videos; my DVD player and VCR are both connected to it.

So far, so good.

But I also use iTunes, and often buy TV shows and movies to watch on my iPhone when I travel. I've thought about watching the movies at my desk on my iMac but...I spend all day at the desk working, and my little office isn't exactly a place to hang out with friends and watch a film.

Apple TV is a way to watch iTunes downloads and rentals on a TV in another room. But I've been reluctant to buy the little Apple TV device (with its not-so-little price tag) because I couldn't quite believe that it could get a movie from my iMac to my TV (two rooms away) without loss of quality.

Now I have a book that explains it all: The Apple TV Pocket Guide by Jeff Carlson (PeachPit Press, 2008)! And I've put Apple TV on my Christmas list.

That feels better

A thousand years from now some archeologist will be pondering over early 21st century skeletons and wondering why we all had hunched shoulders. Or perhaps some of us will be buried in our Aerons and the answer will be obvious: deskwork.

Massage therapist Larry Swanson has assumed the persona of The Office Rat to help us bring a fitness mentality to our office jobs. His Office Rat blog provides a tip a day, many with You Tube videos, to help us combat desk debilitation. Larry interviews fitness and bodywork experts like Reta Wright-Kinghorn (a sleep disorders clinician) and Lara McIntosh (from Wassa Dance), and draws on his own experience as a massage therapist.

Larry is the therapist who helped me figure why I was having trouble with the warrior poses in yoga. He showed me how years of hunching over a keyboard had shortened and tightened the muscles in my chest, making it very difficult for me to release and extend my arms back and out to the side. Some assisted stretching, and persisting with the yoga, eventually solved the problem.

Check out his latest tip, on stretching your forearms.

Still crazy

I spent last week stressing out trying to pull together a 45-minute talk for a blogging conference that took place Saturday at UW. It was hard work, but the conference, BigFoot Blogging, turned out to be worth it. It was the type of conference at which most of the audience members were qualified and articulate enough that they could have switched places with the speakers. The questions really had us hopping.

I have to confess that I needed to spend most of Sunday recovering. (How do the presidential candidates do it? Day after day of speeches!)

The plan for this week was to refocus on my clients' projects. That didn't get off to a good start today when I got tied up trying to express-ship some legal documents to a friend in Korea.

Then an amazing work opportunity appeared in my inbox this evening. Pulling together a proposal will be even more challenging than creating the conference talk and slides. Here we go. Again.

Missing cats in Sunset Hill linked to coyote

For the past few weeks, there've been "missing cat" posters all up and down 34th Avenue NW. Now we know why: A neighbor spotted a coyote on 34th between NW 68th and NW 70th — just six blocks north of us, and one block north of where Smokey lives with his co-owner.

Smokey is not much of a wanderer, and lives in greenhouse in a gated yard. However, our kitties Kaylee and Zoe go out in the evening, and this has me very unhappy, as a coyote can cover quite a bit of territory. They will not be happy if I try to keep them in, but we may have reached that point.

What a week

And there's one more day yet.

I spent last weekend at Foolscap, a science fiction convention, the first one for which I've stayed in the hotel and been immersed in programming and socializing. I had a minor volunteer role, which provided some structure to the weekend. Otherwise I simply went around and chatted with folks -- including an SF dignitary who has the same name as I do (which had led to confusion at a previous con, until the late Anita Rowland came up with the idea of prefacing my name with "The Other" on my badge).

One of the distinctive elements of Foolscap is that it's a highly participative con. Many attendees signed up in advance to be on panels. I was on two, including a late-night exploration of vampire romances. That was particularly weird because, to everyone's surprise, Foolscap was sharing the Marriott with...a vampire convention.

The vampire contingent pretty much kept to themselves, though I did get a few looks as I was going down in the elevator to the vampire panel wearing a long black silk skirt, black high heels, and a black velvet blouse.

Not sure what the vampires were doing, but our programming included late-night story telling, a radio play, a round-robin writing collaboration using manual typewriters, an art show, and an auction (at which I won a celadon green wool scarf knitted by a local author). 

On the way back from the con, I went to a "naked ladies" clothing exchange organized by women in the Seattle contradance community. I brought two dozen tops to exchange, and came away with some interesting items for the steampunk costumes I'm working up for Orycon in November. These included a long wool walking skirt that appears to be a reproduction of an Edwardian skirt.

In contrast to the playful weekend, the week has been a relentless schedule of writing, editing, and meetings, along with interviews with new clients and prospective clients. I've been starting at 7 a.m., and still editing at 11 p.m. My new TV, a 32" LCD, arrived Wednesday and I haven't even tried to take it out of the box yet.

Watched the Palin-Biden "debate" tonight with friends at the Red Door. It wasn't much of a debate; mostly the candidates seem to pretend the other one isn't there. Palin didn't even answer the interviewer's questions. I think it was disgraceful.

Which do you paint first, the walls or the trim?

I'm getting ready to paint a room, and have been looking at online guides to painting, from DIY blogs to paint company how-tos (not as well written as the blogs).

They boil down to about the same thing, except on one burning issue: Which do you paint second (after the ceiling): the walls, or the trim? There seem to be strong arguments for each approach.

Anyone want to weigh in on this, and explain your rationale? I'm all ears, for the moment. In a week or two, I'm sure I'll be all paint and not nearly as receptive to advice.

L'Shanah Tovah!

Cats and rain

Kaylee, the small tabby, failed to wake me up at 5:30 this morning. I woke up a little before 8 and saw her curled up in the "meatloaf" pose (paws tucked under chest) at the foot of the bed. I realized that she'd seen the rain and had decided that "outdoors" is no longer the wonderful place it has been most of the summer.

Fall is here, and even the cat knows it.

(picture of Kaylee and large sister Zoe in sunnier times)

Not enough hours in the day

I write and write and write all day, but not much of it is fiction, and not much of it is paying work either.

Instead, I write emails trying to head various well-meaning advisors off at the pass, post to groups about conferences we're planning, send notes to colleagues about errors and omissions on their websites, and exchange emails with clients about the priorities and pricing of various pieces of work we have underway. Tonight I edited an article for a friend (with a 13-pound cat sleeping on my left wrist).

Tomorrow everything I write will be billable. I swear. And cat-free.

Post-migraine

I used to get stress- and/or sinus-related migraines all the time. Now I get them about four times a year. As a result, I now tend to forget how to recognize them in the early stages.

Last night I was extremely tired at the poker game...so tired that I took at nap on the host's very comfy couch with Tasha the cat. I drove home, bleary and yawning, and went to bed. When I woke up this morning still exhausted, with a splitting headache, chills, and nausea, I realized that the migraine had been starting last night and I'd somehow managed to sleep though it as it advanced to a pretty awful degree. (I usually manage to stop the progression before it gets that bad.)

So I started the day in a hot bath, trying to nibble enough rice that I'd be able to keep down two Tylenol Sinus pills that would start me on the route to recovery. Once the bath had stopped the chills, and I'd taken the Tylenol, I went to bed for five hours, sleeping the semi-hallucinatory sleep I get with a migraine. By 3 p.m., the headache had receded, leaving me hungry and shaky, and rather annoyed because I was still too light-sensitive and tired to go to a friend's birthday kayaking party, which I'd been looking forward to all week. And I had to turn down an invitation for a photography outing at the Puyallup Fair.

But after some protein (my standing post-migraine meal) I put on a hat, went out in the garden, and began slowly to work at gardening tasks, which turned out to be quite restorative. Kaylee, our little striped cat, had guarded me all during the migraine attack, and all three cats came out to join me in the garden as I pruned the overgrowth and staked a few dahlias. Later Zorg and I made a quick run up to Home Depot so I could pick up a gas grill on end-of-season sale to replace the old grill that's slowing losing it.

Now it's 10 p.m. and I'm finally tackling the organizational tasks that had been slated for the morning. I'm going to try to get to bed before midnight and get back onto a normal sleep cycle so I can get to a NIA dance class in the morning.

Yes we scan

A few weeks ago I bought an HP Officejet J5780 All-in-One (copier, printer, scanner, and fax) primarily to photocopy 13 years worth of tax returns.

The convenience of a decent little in-house photocopier cannot be overstated!

It was easy to then hook it up to my Mac as a printer (though the printing performance lags behind the speed and photo quality of the Businessjet 1200 I'd been using).

But things went downhill rapidly when I tried to set up the scan function. The software disk that came with the J5780 refused to install the software (it got into a loop that kept asking me to agreed to install some "customer updates" software). Then, the software I found on the HP site (after some really annoying searching) and downloaded, also had a nasty little loop and wouldn't install.

I spent a few days monkeying with this, and getting increasing steamed. Finally I Googled the problem and found a long discussion about similar frustrations at MacRumors, ending with a link to a page on the HP site with some universal software for HPs that, when downloaded installed, solved the scanning problem. The J5780 turns out to be quite a nice scanner, too.

I'm astonished to find that I'm using the copier on a daily basis. Now I need to splurge and pick up a second printer cable so I can have both printers hooked up at the same time. Oooh!

Weird year in the garden

The witch hazel is blooming in August; it's supposed to bloom in February, when the deep yellow spiky flowers stand out against the snow and ice. I hope that doesn't mean we're about to have snow and ice...

The wisteria is mature enough that it's now giving a second (August) bloom. I'll be curious to see if it gives the third (October) bloom the way the wonderful wisteria at the first Shady Rest often did.

Of course, most of the tomatoes are still green. But the apples on the columnar apple tree are attractive and pest-free. Last year the apple had disappointing fruit, infested with all sorts of bugs and diseases, and I'd planned to use various sprays on it this year but never got around to it. Perhaps the weather discouraged the pests? I grabbed the first apple yesterday, and it was perfect. I've noticed that the older apple trees in the neighborhood, usually a mess of moth webs, look quite clean this year and the apples very appealing. If this is true, there are a ton of edible apples on the tree in the yard behind us (and no one there ever picks them).

I've had lettuce growing all summer, and need to get the next crop of greens in for fall. Some years I'm able to grow arugula throughout the winter.

This is the off year for the pear tree (it has just a few pears) and for the Candace grape vine. Both plants look healthy, but there isn't much fruit, and the grapes are teeny and still green. I never really know what to do with a big crop of pears, but I had been looking forward to that intense, spicy pink Candace grape juice.

The gardeners' motto: Next year.

gd wins (the fantasy job contest)

OK, gd, you win with the genre-fiction-publisher-for-the-Kindle suggestion. The two other suggestions I received by email were...thought-provoking, but, frankly, a chance to publish genre fiction wins out.

gd, contact me off-list to select the lunch venue!

Calling it a day at the races

The Zorg and I are winding it down. We found this helpful. (Hey, amusing is helpful.)

Why I'll never be a photo blogger

The first ripe tomato appeared in the garden today.

I ate it.

With a small basil leaf as garnish. It was an orange cherry tomato from a plant that volunteered from last year's crop. Texture: B. Flavor: A-.

The garden gnomes are back!

Desk shrine

When I went out this morning to my summer office, this is what I found on the desk:



I ate the blueberries.

Beyond the cat door

At the original Shady West in Wallingford, I built an elaborate slanted walkway to allow our cats to come up along the side of the house and in through a cat door installed in my office window. The unsightly contraption had to be hastily dismantled when we were selling the house.

Now I discover there's an international website (blog) devoted to photos of elaborate stairways and other structures providing indoor/outdoor cats with access to homes.

Not all cats need ladders. This one climbs stucco!

Doesn't seem like summer

The cool, wet, wayward weather kept me inside much of the day, which was just as well. I did laundry, cleaned the cluttered laundry room, and photocopied 13 years of tax returns using the new HP Officejet J5780 All-in-One.

I haven't hooked up the Officejet's fax or printer capabilities yet, but the photocopying and scanning are great. I swung by Office Max this evening to get more black printer cartridges and was whining to the salesperson about how quickly I'd gone through the first two cartridges. He explained that the one that comes with the machine is only half filled (good grief!) and the #74 replacement ordered with the machine is not ideal. He recommended the #74XL, which has three times as much ink. I got two of those, and, since I'd almost finished the tax returns, those should last for a good long while.

The only other snag involved the 2007 return. The copy from our accountant was on a flimsy, environmentally correct paper that couldn't be grasped properly by the copier feed, so it was necessary to place the pages, one by one, on the scanner bed. Grrrr!

This evening I made a tomato sauce with a bit of bacon, and had that on spaghetti -- something I hadn't cooked for a very long time. Then Zorg showed me the musical episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." That was...different!

When the Buffy episode was over, I caught up on the Hugo Awards at Worldcon via Twitter. Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union won Best Novel. The movie Stardust (with a brilliant supporting performance by Dustin Hoffman) beat out the TV series Heroes for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long). A bit of a surprise. Stardust was nice, but traditional, while Heroes broke new ground.

I very much want to attend a Worldcon, but the next two are outside the US: 2009 in Montreal, and 2010 in Australia.

While everyone else is at Worldcon

Quite a few of my friends from the SF community are at Worldcon in Denver this week. But today I got together with another writer -- a published writer! -- downtown and talked about our plans for the upcoming Foolscap writing and art convention in Redmond. And this evening I went to a poker game that, since so many of the usual players were at Worldcon, turned into a viewing of the first reel of Citizen Kane. Plus we played around with Twinkle, an iPhone app that adds a geographic element to Twitter.

All unexpected, and all fun.

Contest: What should I be doing?

At various times in my life, people whose experience is limited to traditional corporate jobs have decided that my running a freelance business doesn't really constitute working. And that I need a "real job."

They're at it again.

In the past, I've dealt with these campaigns by announcing, after a week or so, that I have looked for and found a full-time editorial contract with an extremely hidebound, uninteresting major company, health benefits included, and that I will be "very busy" for the next six months. Of course, there is no such I contract. I merely continue on with my usual freelance projects, and all is well.

The most amusing of these episodes involved me assuring people that a former client had offered me a full-time gig writing educational curricula. Four days after I concocted the story, damned if that client didn't call and offer me exactly that project (which I took on as part-time contractor).

Under pressure from the "traditional job" lobby, I'm considering serving up another fantasy job. But I need to be careful -- what if the fake job turns into an actual job offer again?

I'd love it if the Mysterious Traveler readers would help with this "job hunt" -- by keeping me entertained. While I cook up a plausible job, you get to be creative. The person who invents the most amusing/creative job offer for me gets lunch at Kaosamai in Fremont or Hattie's Hat in Ballard. (Not sure what I'll do if the contest is won by an out-of-town reader...but we'll think of something.)

Please include in your contest entry: Job title, job description, location (commute? telecommute?), any special job responsibilities or requirements, and (of course) compensation. Please leave the job offer in the form of a comment on the blog or send email to me at mysterioustraveler [at] gmail.com.

Stay tuned. The best "job offers" will be compiled and posted (without attribution!) at a later date.

Weekend report

This cool weather, with intermittent sun, is no doubt preventing me from suffering sunburn. But it just doesn't seem like summer. I did get out in the garden yesterday, trimming the neighbor's out-of-control forsythia, which was looming over our fence, and cleaning up other foliage in the back yard. John came over and I tried out Zevia cola on him (a cola sweetened with stevia). We were sitting at the table on the back patio, and I realized I haven't even brought out the patio umbrella yet this year! Perhaps later this week, when they allege it will get into the 90s and break temperature records (Tuesday).

Friday night I went to a party Janice hosted for the new graduates of the Clarion West writing workshop and saw various celebrity instructors and patrons. I was pretty much out of my depth, but did meet another beginning-level writer with whom I'm going to have coffee next week. Highlight of the party for me was listening to Thom Davis, a superb blues guitarist who was a guest of one of the guests. He performs frequently over on the peninsula; I intend to get over there soon to hear an entire evening of his music.

Saturday evening I was at a more intimate gathering of science fiction fans Andi and Stu hosted. They have the perfect party backyard! Unfortunately, they also had a heap of extra books available, so of course I came home with more reading material. (M.G. Lord's Astro Turf.) I met one of the organizers of the Australian science fiction community, who is on his way to Worldcon in Denver, aiming to get the 2010 Worldcon to be held in Australia. Oh, I'll want to go to that one!

Plans for today are yoga, haircut with Ross at Habitude, and the Ballard Farmers Market. If the weather really does getting sunny and warm, it's back to the garden to confront the oxalis that's crept into two of the front beds. Or maybe the annual bamboo trimming... Where's a three-day weekend when I need it?

News

Some of you heard a few days ago that Zorg and I are divorcing. There are no dramatic events that precipitated this, and I'm not talking about the details except to say that I am the instigator. Yes, we have talked with a counselor.

Each of us is meeting with a collaborative lawyer to begin work on what is known as "collaborative divorce."

As I understand it, a collaborative divorce uses an open process to reach a legal agreement that meets both partners needs and priorities. It's nothing like an adversarial court proceeding. In fact, if collaboration fails, you'd have to find completely different attorneys to file in court -- the collaborative attorneys don't do that.

We're optimistic about this process and hope to remain friendly through it and afterwards.

After 90, then what?

My mom celebrated her 90th birthday this past week. She'd had a 90th birthday send-off from her friends in Florida this past winter, and her actual 90th was celebrated by her friends in Edmonds Thursday. Friday night I took her to Canlis (a celebration we'd decided on three years ago).

This morning I called my mom and she said that now all the fuss (cards, flowers, candy, and phone calls from friends back East) is over, she is feeling a little bit down. After all, what do you celebrate after 90?

A good question, and not one you can field with a trite answer.

I told her that I had a bit of the same problem when I left Apple. When I worked at Apple, that was pretty much my identity -- a short label that everyone recognized and found impressive. I knew that the day after I left Apple I'd be just another freelance writer.

And, yet, it turned out better than that. The cache of having been at Apple stuck with me, and has been very helpful in getting contract work. In the same way, having made it to 90 will now be an achievement that follows her.

My mom is an unusual 90, because she doesn't look it, and certainly doesn't act it. Or sound it. She called her doctor's office the other day to make an appointment for her annual checkup and the woman on the phone, trying to find the chart for yet another Anderson, asked for the year she was born. My mom said "1918" and the woman yelped "What?!!!"

Quiet week

Mysterious Traveler will be on hiatus for a week. Thanks for your patience.

What's wrong?

LinkedIn is down for maintenance, Twitter is down for maintenance, and Blogger is extremely twitchy. I quit.

Money

Who isn't thinking about money these days?

If you are a serious investor with cash reserves this will eventually be a time to pick up some bargains, but those may very well be long-term investments that could take three or four years to realize.

Meanwhile, I've pretty much cut expenditures to fixing things that are broken and maintaining services essential to health and business. I just downgraded my membership in a business organization that has delusions of usefulness, and I'm letting some subscriptions lapse.

I was amused to see that the Wall Street Journal has sent out to their longtime subscribers a "special renewal price" offer of $349 a year or $499 for two years. While all over their website is an "introductory" price of $99 a year.

So, if someone lets their subscription lapse for a week and signs up anew, they save $249 a year? The mind boggles.

New car, new perspective

I'm now driving a 2008 Honda Fit. It feels just like my 1990 Honda Civic, but with automatic transmission, air conditioning, and air bags. I'm happy.

Today was my first day on the road with it, and I was alarmed to find myself sharing the highway with some of the craziest drivers on the planet.

Like the car that suddenly appeared in front of me on Aurora, sideways, and blocking two lanes of fast-moving traffic. I slammed on the brakes. The woman had apparently overshot the turn for a strip-mall shopping center, so, instead of circling the block, she decided to stop, back up, and then drive the wrong way down Aurora to get back to the store.

Monday also appears to be "take your big industrial truck to Ballard" day. Every third vehicle seemed to be a garbage truck, recycling truck or a tree-removal truck. Once they're on the road, and a bus stops behind them, you might as well just calm down and park.

Updates

Zorg is packing his gear for the Seattle-to-Portland two-day bike ride this weekend. I'll be driving down to Portland Sunday morning to pick him up at the finish. There are 9000 riders, but he'll have his cell phone so we should eventually find each other.

I just put a deposit on a 2008 Honda Fit (Sport, automatic) that I'll pick up Monday...I just couldn't wait for the 2009s (now moved out to October 2008) and the prices on the Fits just came down as a result of the slowing economy. It will be wonderful to have a car again, especially a fuel-efficient one.

Tonight I'm going to see Eddie Izzard at the Paramount, and tomorrow night it's SummerMash.

Monday madness

I wandered out to the curb with some cardboard boxes for recyling and was nearly bowled over by a brindle pit bull. According to a neighbor, she'd been galloping up and down our street for more than an hour. No collar.

I let her into the garage, gave her a bowl of water, and called the animal shelter. Turns out the shelter is closed for intake until noon on Monday, and didn't think they could schedule a pickup. I let the pit bull back out, which, unfortunately, was when it saw Sheba, our deaf white cat.

Sheba does not run from dogs, and usually this scares the dogs off. But it did not deter the pit bull, which was right on Sheba before she realized it was time to move, and fast. She and the pit bull vanished into the neighbor's garden shed. Seconds later, Sheba exploded out of the eaves, leaving the pit bull crashing around in the stored equipment.

I capture the pit bull, got it back in the garage, and called the pound again. They said I could get a possible pickup in the afternoon. I cancelled all my work appointments and went out to find Sheba, who was on a neighbor's roof looking upset.

Figuring I could drive the pit bull to the shelter at noon, I went down the street to the home of a reclusive neighbor woman who has two pit bulls. I eventually got her to come to the door, and, sure enough, she had a harness and a leash to loan me. Back home, I coaxed Sheba off the roof and took her upstairs. Then I went down to the garage, where the pit bull was banging around, slipped in, and was relieved to find that it stepped right into the harness. My plan was to take it for a walk, then put it in the car and go to the pound and wait for them to open.

We walked up the alley, turned onto 32nd Ave. NW, and an SUV pulled up with a woman who jumped out and said "That's my dog."

Turns out she'd called the pound, but they hadn't made the connection between her lost pit bull and my found pit bull.

I lectured her fairly sternly about the cat incident; she apologized, I returned the dog, and they drove off. Back at home, I noticed Sheba had a cut on her forehead, so I took her to vet. It was a minor injury -- not from the pit bull, but from the acrobatics involved in her escape. The vet shaved some hair, so now Sheba looks like a unicorn that had its horn removed.

My day was pretty much in shambles; I made it to our accountant's, but missed yoga class when an elderly woman fainted in the parking lot next to my car and I took care of her while her husband went off and got their car to transport her to the nearby emergency room.

Enough new stuff came in today that I didn't deal with all the stuff that got cancelled yesterday, so now I'm dealing with phone calls and emails from people who are probably getting somewhat irate. I did, however, get to belly dance class this evening and now I feel much less worried about the irate people. If you're one of them, my apologies.

An extra day

Odd to have a Friday holiday.

Zorg mowed the lawn; I trimmed plants, cleaned my office closet, ran some errands, and made chocolate-dipped cherries for a 4th of July party in Fremont. At the party, there was much grim conversation about the political climate and the economy. Several people felt that McCain's new staff is part of his alignment with the sector of the Republican party that was involved in the voting-machine rigging in Ohio and Florida in 2004.

Walked part of the way home, and then Zorg picked me up on the Fremont/Ballard border. We checked on our vacationing neighbors' cats and mice -- no fish this time. The cats, which get kibble as a rule, look forward to our visits because we bring small offerings of wet food.

Both of us remarked on how much quieter this Fourth seems than previous ones. Is it the economy?

The thunderstorms last night took care of watering the garden for a few days -- that's a real holiday for me.

Cats out for summer

Warm weather arrives, and the cats respond to the call of the wild.

Our neighbor's cat, Bee, spent five days trapped on someone's balcony until the woman across the street asked about the "new cat" and the homeowners noticed her. (You have to wonder if they were hard of hearing.)

Our big tabby, Zoe, has gotten trapped twice in the past few days. The first time, I opened the attic door to reach inside for a straw hat; Zoe slipped in, and spent the next few hours in the hot attic until I heard her yowling.

She failed utterly to learn her lesson. This morning I went into the garden shed for a pair of clippers. Zoe slipped in, and then spent the entire day in the shed. I noticed her missing this afternoon, called her name, and heard yowling again. When I opened the door, she shot out and dashed across the lawn, stopping on the patio to give me a hurt look.

Now I've resolved to conduct a "whisker count" every few hours to make sure I know where all three cats are.

It could certainly be worse. John Hedtke reports on the adventures of their cat Silas, which began with a tumble from a second floor balcony. John and his wife captured the injured cat and put him into a cardboard carrier, which promptly opened from the bottom, dumping the now-berserk cat onto the floor. And that was only the beginning...