Russell Up Das Barbecu!

I've never seen or heard Wagner's Ring Cycle, but that isn't stopping me from going to the ACT Theatre parody of it, Das Barbecu, tomorrow night.

Of course, knowing something about the 20-hour, four-part opera being parodied would probably help. Fortunately, singer Anna Russell provides a delightful synopsis, which has been posted on You Tube. (The synopsis is also in four parts, each about 10 minutes. I linked to Part 1, which was the only one I could find that had video as well as audio. It's worth tracking down and listening to all four parts.)

Off to Gnomedex

It's been quite a while since I've gone to any confabs in the social media community. These are the people who were second-wave adopters of Twitter and who believe there is vast potential for communities and businesses in places like the Twitterverse (and Second Life, and Facebook, and blogging).

I'm not so sure; I tend to use social media for fun or for professional development (depending on the platform). My clients use it for marketing and fundraising and, while I'm happy to advise them, I'm not crazy about being on the receiving end of 90 percent of the marketing and fundraising that goes on.

For the next two days I'll be at Gnomedex in Seattle and will report back on Sunday.

Low tide at Golden Gardens

People often ask me how I can focus on work in a home office. Actually, I often have the opposite problem — I'm just a few steps away from the outdoors, in casual clothing, but I'm tapping away at the keyboard for hours on end. This is particularly sad because I'm just a few blocks from a beautiful beach.

This morning the Scholarly Gentleman and I got up early and went down to Golden Gardens to see what was revealed by this morning's ultra-low tide. There were crabs, a huge live scallop, spurting clams, and thousands of anemone. And many seagulls and egrets enjoying the sashimi banquet.

There were people fishing, several painters with easels, day care teachers with squealing, splashing kids, and one woman who had set up a chair on the wet sand and was warbling opera to the waves.

Here's my iPhone video of how to annoy a clam. You can hear the seagulls, and the Burlington Northern, in the background.

Who's afraid of the big bag wolf?

That is not a typo.

I am referring to the Seattle shopping-bag fee ballot measure and its slavering opponents.

As someone who lives in a world where gas prices soar $1 per gallon in a month, where people routinely pay $3.50 for a daily latte, and where dry cleaning prices are approaching the level of fees for restoration of rare artworks, my reaction to the bag fee is: big deal.

In fact, I'm grateful that stores will sell me a cheap plastic or paper bag to use if I've spaced out and forgotten to drag around my own trendy, reusable shopping sack. It would be difficult to carry 10 potatoes out of the store in my hands.

In the past week, I have received several calls from the bag-fee opponents, disguised as "surveys" that purport to want my "opinion" on the bag fee.

I agreed to take one, and the surveyor read a "question" that went something like this:

"How do you feel about an oppressive, socialist invasion of government into your life by way of a bag tax?"

a. in favor

b. maybe kinda in favor

c. not in favor

d. heat up the tar, Bubba, them bag tax people is a-headed this-a-way

"And how do you feel about the opponents valiantly trying to defend our community against the bag tax?"

"They're a bunch of hysterical wing-nuts," I cut in. "I feel no need to be defended against a 20-cent bag."

To my surprise and delight, the surveyor, a young woman, burst into laughter. I hope our call wasn't being monitored for "quality assurance."

Heat

I grew up in Northern Virginia, the capitol of Hot & Humid. But Hot weather in Seattle is different; I think that's because it's dry heat in an environment that's used to being humid. All the plants look stunned.

Today was Too Hot, and that's not good — because the rest of the week is going to be Hotter.

The only reason I'm not currently sprawled in a wading pool in my (relatively cool) back yard is that Fred Meyer was out of wading pools.

The house itself is warm, even though I've had the front screen door, and the back (unscreened) door open most of the evening.

The basement TV room is habitable; the main floor is a bit cozy; and the upstairs, a former attic with a cathedral ceiling, is like an oven, despite a fan that's been going all day and French doors open onto the breeze from the Sound.

I can't believe that the first couple of years here there weren't any sun awnings on the West-facing front window and French doors. The awnings, plus interior shades and curtains, make quite a difference most days.

But today...it's just Hot. The cats spent the day laying around looking like moth-eaten furs at a crummy estate sale. After dark, they recovered somewhat and are now out in the back yard. I even let Sheba, the deaf white cat, go out wandering tonight so she could cool off.

Fremont zombie walk video

Hank Graham has posted his semi-official video of the 2009 record-breaking Fremont Zombie Walk.

Not only is this professional-quality documentary work, but Jonathan Coulton allowed them to use his "Re: Your Brains" as the sound track.

Brilliant!

Stuff on my house

The painters are coming tomorrow to pressure wash the house; they'll be back next week to apply semi-solid stain and then to paint the trim. I can't believe it's been five years since the house was painted!

In preparation for their visit, I've been removing things that are next to the house and on the porches — no small task, it turns out. Two plants are espaliered against the house; on the hidden north side, I'd been storing the wheelbarrow, ladders, a bag of sand, and extra garden chairs under the overhang. Somehow the front of the house has two sets of house numbers! Fragile planters had to be moved, and bushes trimmed. Hose holders and such had to be unscrewed from the trim. All of this cleanup revealed piles of moldy leaves, and big weeds growing in the leaves. More cleanup!

As a result, I've gotten very little officework done this week. When I did sit down at my desk, I got to tangle with AT&T over the iPhone bill (friendly but confusing) and with Bank of America over web long-in (worst identity verification I've ever encountered on a website).

Susan is out of town for the week, so no evening yoga classes. But there's a special yoga dance class every morning at Taj Yoga this week, so I've been up there every morning at 9 — which means I'm not getting to to work until just before 11.

Next week, back to normal. But with the painters swarming all over the house.

The return of the Zombie Flu

I'm still having episodes of exhaustion and aches, so have cancelled yet another weekend's plans. When I have energy, I spend a few hours at my desk, so am able to keep up with all my work projects.

The high point of the day was petting Garibaldi, the semi-feral tomcat. He was sleeping out on the raised deck in the back yard and I went out to talk with him. I usually do this from a distance of about three feet. He runs away if I get any closer.

Today he hissed as I approached, but then rolled onto his back and stretched out as if he wanted his stomach rubbed. So I reached out and rubbed him. He twisted away, then rolled back to be petted, then got up and head-butted my hand, then shrunk away, then came back and lay down again and let me scratch his chin. There was obviously an argument going on between the part of him that wanted to be petted and the part that was frightened. After about three minutes, he stood up and moved away. I went inside and got a can of food and put some into his bowl on the back porch, then went inside and let him eat by himself.

Garibaldi's fur is nice and soft, like Sheba's.

The Zombie Flu

Forget the swine flu...this is the Zombie Flu.

The Scholarly Gentleman and I worked registration at the record-setting Fremont Zombie Walk Friday afternoon and evening. We got home very late, and I attributed SG's comments about a sore throat and fever to all the yelling we'd been doing ("Zombies? Register here! Whoops, let me wipe the blood off that pen.") and standing in the hot sun for several hours. It seemed like something a good night's sleep and rehydration would take care of.

Wrong.

Saturday morning, the SG looked and sounded like a zombie who'd died of bronchitis. He retired to the crypt.

By Sunday morning, he was feeling slightly less ghoulish, but I was flattened with milder but definitely similar symptoms. (The weather is warm -- but not 99.9 degrees, surely?)

All social plans for the weekend were canceled, with many apologies.

We'll be back from the dead. Soon.

Back from Minneapolis

I spent the weekend at a literary conference in Minneapolis. It's a city with a real sense of itself — the sort of identity a place has when it's the cultural center of the state. Beautiful parks, lots of agricultural and industrial history, everyone talking about the arts — and about religion, but not in a conservative sense. And you definitely get the feeling that people appreciate warm weather, which they were having.

It was good to get home — at an appalling hour — Sunday night. It had rained, so the tomatoes were doing well. Monday morning Garibaldi, the orange tom cat, was waiting on the back porch to be fed. He had a cut on his nose — always some new evidence of a fight.

After he ate, he came over and sniffed my hand, which I viewed as real progress. But I haven't seen him since then, and am now pretty sure that something out there (coyotes? a car? another cat?) got him. Or maybe someone captured him and took him to be neutered.

In a hour or so I'm picking up Smokey — my cat who lives with a neighbor seven blocks north — and taking him in for his annual vet visit. Another feline mystery.

Slobs on the web

As you know, I'm among the first to rush to the ramparts to defend web content writers from the accusation that we have lower standards for writing than our print colleagues.

Having spent this past week involved in a print project, I may need to stand down.

I was given the text taken from a non-profit's website and asked to lay out the text into a simple print brochure. (Using Apple's delightful page layout application, Pages.)

I sent the completed layout to the non-profit, expecting some comments back such as "more illustrations," "larger headlines," or "Can you make the columns shorter?" but got instead several dozen corrections to punctuation and capitalization and a number of complete rewrites of paragraphs.

"But," I pointed out to the person serving as the liaison for this work, "All those punctuation and capitalization problems, plus the sloppy writing and incorrect information, are on their website and have been there for the whole world to see for months."

He peered out from around the filing cabinet where he had taken shelter.

"Er, can you just make the changes?" he said.

Happy blogiversary

Friday was the 6th anniversary of The Mysterious Traveler Sets Out.

I celebrated by taking delivery of my new iMac (my third iMac in the past eight or nine years). I still haven't had time to open the box and set the thing up, so that's on the list for tomorrow. Setting it up, of course, takes about 10 minutes. It's deciding which apps to risk bring over with the data and which to reinstall from scratch that's tricky.

I intend to consult Adam Engst's ebook Take Control of Buying a Mac, which covers things like "How should I connecct my old and new Macs so I can transfer files?" and "What should I do about iTunes authorization when moving to a new Mac?"

And now, for my next act...

I've left a few threads loose on this blog in the past month or two, so this an attempt to tie them up.

• Some good news: I got the contract to write humorous essays about home and lifestyle topics for a local consumer newsletter. It's subscriber-only, and I am not able to retain rights to republish, so I can't re-post any of the essays on my blog. And they're not online. But I'm delighted to have an opportunity to do my favorite type of writing.

• I'm pretty much recovered from breaking my nose when I feel over some fencing on the patio while chasing a cat in the middle of the night.

• The orange cat, Mr. Garibaldi, is coming by for two meals a day and has let me touch him twice. Mostly he likes to sunbathe on the deck or sleep at the bottom of the back porch stairs.

Still recovering from Folklife weekend, which was great. I thought the festival was less chaotic than in past years, and more acoustic. Didn't get as much dancing done as I would have liked, but got the chance to catch up with several folks I hadn't seen in ages. High points of the weekend included seeing the Morris dancing mockumentary "A Life with Bells On," shown as a collaboration between SIFF and Folklife, and hearing Mike's band close the Roadhouse Sunday night with the waltz he composed for Nina.

I know exactly what I want for Christmas

Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes film, with Robert Downey as Holmes, opens Christmas Day.

Have ink cartridges, need printer

There's often a humorous side to technical glitches, though it's hard to see it when you've just spent close to $300 replacing three ink cartridges and three print heads on an HP Business Inkjet 1200d printer and it still prints faded, blurry pages and will only print the last page of any print job!

The printer refused to believe that the expensive new print heads, purchased from a reputable office supply place, were HP print heads. And the office supply place wouldn't take them back because they had been opened.

Part of my problem is that the HP Business Inkjet was manufactured in 2004 and purchased in 2006, which means it's so obsolete that the repair place I called (which would charge $125 just to look at a printer) warned me they wouldn't be able to get any parts for it, anyway.

So I figured I'd just give the thing away to someone who could use the $180 worth of fresh ink cartridges. I went on Craig's List to put together an ad.

That's when I found the guy who is selling two HP Business Inkjet 1200d printers, both in working condition, for $25 each. (The pair of them are about the same price as one color ink cartridge, BTW.) One of the printers is missing its power cable, but, what do you know, I've got one!

So tomorrow morning I'm driving to Tukwila to pick up two working (if obsolete) printers to go with my pricey ink cartridges. Yes, I know there is something weird about this.

Journalism dreams

I've been bidding on some fascinating projects recently. One would involve writing a humor column. The other is a comprehensive marketing communications program for a group of developers with an aggressive business plan. So: Lots of bids, lots of emails, lots of meetings.

Last night I dreamed I'd been hired to do marketing communications for a non-profit. I wasn't that interested in the work, but needed the money. The non-profit had offices in an old industrial building near Pioneer Square, and while waiting for the elevator there, I got talking to a man who had just come out of a big office that looked like a turn-of-the-century newsroom.

Through the dusty glass windows, I could see that the room was filled with intellectual-looking folks, lounging about and reading — old hippies and bohemians and academics. It turned out that the man on his way out was the managing editor of a magazine; he'd just quit because he was fed up. He asked me if I wanted the job — said the writers were impossible to manage. I asked him how much the editor's job was paying. He quoted quite a respectable amount, and I asked for an additional 10 percent.

"Fine," he said, handing me some keys. "It's all yours."

He disappeared into the elevator and I walked into the magazine office. It was filled with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and massive oak desks; all the horizontal surfaces were covered with books and papers. The writers, mostly men, but some women, looked at me with expressions that would have been considered glares if they had been more energetic.

I picked up a phone (it was an old, dial phone) and began calling one of my two favorite editors in town. I was convinced that if I could get those two guys in to work with me, we could whip the place into shape. I remember being rather pleased that I felt so confident.

This has to be the first time I've ever dreamed about running a magazine!

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.