Oil crisis, revisited

December, 1973 -- My job during Christmas vacation from college was to get up before dawn in the frigid New England winter, bundle up as if for an Artic trek, and drive the family car to the gas station. There I would buy a cup of lousy coffee and a pile of newspapers and wait two or three hours in a gas line.

Fortunately, one of the family gas-guzzling Impalas had a license plate that ended in an even number while the other car's plate ended in an odd. Under the Massachusetts rationing system of odd and even days, that meant I could be gassing up one car while my mom was driving the other one on her dailly commute from our house on the Cape to Boston, where she worked and where her elderly parents lived. The next day we switched cars and did it all over again. My father instituted a strict system of recording all gas purchases and mileage in little notebooks kept in the glove compartments.

In those days, cars didn't have locking gas tanks, so after you filled up, your next task was to back the car into the driveway with the side with the gas tank as close to the house as possible. All porch and yard lights were left on through the night to thwart gas thieves who were cruising the neighborhoods with gas cans and siphoning equipment. This fortress mentality was even creepier given our living arrangements at the time.

My parents had sold our house in suburban Virginia the previous spring and were supposed to be retiring to a new development in East Sandwich, a historic town on the Cape. My father had designed a large house overlooking the bay, but the builder had gone bankrupt and the subcontractors had walked off the job. While new house stood half finished, my folks were living in our tiny, uninsulated summer cottage in Dennisport. It had two little bedrooms, a closet-size bathroom with a shower (no tub), and a combined kitchen/diningroom/livingroom. The sole heat source was one floor register in the livingroom. Each morning, I woke up with ice on the insides of the windows of my bedroom, scraped the window, and peered out to make sure we had fuel in the two propane tanks outside. The washing machine, intended only for summer use, was in a closet off the back porch, where it was in constant danger of freezing water lines. Summer cottages didn't have dryers, so the clothes went out to the backyard clothesline where they were usually frozen before they were dry.

We were the only off-season residents on our winding dirt road and many days ours were the only cars that went down the street. We picked up our mail at the town Post Office, hauled our trash to the dump, and were eyed suspicously by the year-round residents, many of whom had been living on the Cape since their surly ancesters had arrived on the Mayflower and set about inbreeding. If I hadn't wanted to leave home for good when I first went off to college, I sure did after that long winter in Dennisport!

Today, when I paid $31.65 for 10.4 gallons of gas at the 7-11, it brought back memories of the winter of 73-74. I made a mental note to go home and check the insulation, caulk the windows, and get out my UGGs. I think it's going to be another long, cold winter.

September

Here's Kaylee enjoying the beautiful September weather on our front porch.

A New Orleans refugee

One of the blogs I follow has a post from a New Orleans refugee who works at Tulane. She moved her belongings to the top floor of her house and fled north by car on Sunday. The friends whose car they were caravaning with had a breakdown, so the contents of both households had to be crammed into a Ford Escort as they pushed on in the traffic. Here's her story.

I think of a Seattle disaster, us in a traffic jam on I-5 fleeing with our computers and as many of the cats as we could locate, and I shudder. Zorg says that New Orleans is essentially gone for good. He has an interesting post on someone who accurately predicted the storm impact three years ago.

Bumbershoot: They really don't get the picture

According to the general info page for the Bumbershoot Festival, cameras will not be allowed on the Seattle Center grounds during the four-day festival.

I can understand flash cameras being banned from indoor concerts, but from the grounds of Seattle Center? Particularly when half of the cell phones around are equipped with cameras? Who is going to enforce this rule, and how on earth could the concert organizers determine if someone had used a cell phone camera. Would they confiscate the phone and read the memory card?

Bumbershoot also has a ban on audio and video equipment on the grounds during the festival. That was easy to enforce a few years ago, but how are they going to spot and deal with someone whose iPod is equipped with a microphone?

What's even more fascinating is that their website doesn't say that use of cameras and recording is equipment is forbidden -- it says clearly that the devices themselves are forbidden and that attendees should leave those (cell phones and iPods) at home.

Glad that Bumbershoot security isn't my gig. I doubt that most people going to Bumbershoot will bother reading their info page, and cell phone and iPod users will be in for a very bad customer service experience when they arrive with those devices in hand or in backpack.

Hope the weather is excellent for the festival because the info page also states that umbrellas are prohibited. Umbrellas. At the Bumbershoot Festival. Hello?

Frye boots are back

30 years later, embroidered jeans and Frye boots are back. Seriously, if you go to Nordstrom online, Frye boots are one of the featured items in women's shoes. Not just the Frye brand, but the actual square-toed, camel-colored boots from the '70s. They're called "The Campus" and come in the traditional colors "banana" and "saddle" as well as, I kid you not, "lilac." Nordstrom has the knee-high 14" shafts, but, as I recall, most of us wore the mid-calf 12" boots. They were the most comfortable boots I'd ever owned (though later surpassed by a $300 pair purchased in Milan).

This picture of me in my Fryes was taken at the Berkshire Mountains Bluegrass Festival in 1976. The boots are long gone. (As I recall, I wore them until they fell apart, and by then they'd gone out of style). However, I still own the patchwork embroidered hiphugger bootcut jeans which surely have a future in a museum of the counter-culture.

Real-life Katrina coverage

Real writers covering Katrina in New Orleans, courtesy of the New Orleans Metroblogging group.

I can't believe how uninformative the official news sites are. They must be printing the press releases from various public safety bureaucracies. Is post-Iran journalism now the standard for covering weather crises as well?

Ouch!

Just spent three hours typing, first time since wrist surgery Tuesday. OUCH! My arm is on fire.

This afternoon, as the wind came up, I sent Zorg out to close the patio umbrella. I remember years when we had to batten down the whole patio set every few weeks, but there hasn't been a storm all summer. This looked like it would be the first one. But the rain that came, after all the wind and ominous clouds, wasn't much. Now Betaille's out there on the back porch looking in at us as if to say "What a bunch of wimps!" (I'd taken in the nice outdoor pillow for her cedar bench.)

I hope we got enough rain to soak the arugula starts.

BTW, gardening alert: Swanson's 50%-off-shrubs-and-vines sale starts Thursday, Sept. 1, and they'll be getting new stock in during the sale period. There are some very nice beauty berry bushes.

PLANTS AVAILABLE SOON: I'll be removing from my garden one very large bear's breeches, a large purple hebe, a young pieris japonica, and (if possible to remove in one piece) a big woody purple hydrangea. Also, a rosemary in the shape of a 5-foot Christmas tree that just isn't happy in the terra cotta pot it's currently in. All very nice plants but just too big for this little cottage garden. Let me know if you are interested in any of these. Have any dahlias or peonies to trade?

Needed: butler and gardener

Tuesday's wrist surgery was short, successful, and pretty much painless. Now I'm wearing a bulky cast on my right arm and gnashing my teeth in frustration at everything I can't do. Like type, cook, garden, and drive. I've been working lefthanded, going for long walks at lunchtime, and reading. Zorg has been chauffeuring me around. I still need a butler/chef, a gardener/cat wrangler, and a typist who takes dictation. The cast comes off Wednesday, and everything except extreme gardening should be possible.

Slow blog

You've heard of the slow food movement? I'll be kicking off the slow blog movement tomorrow or the day after when I return to the keyboard after wrist surgery. The surgery is not for carpal tunnel or anything serious; it's to remove a cyst created this spring when I spent an afternoon digging up a big rhody. The cyst has been coming and going ever since, and tomorrow it's supposed to go away for good.

They said I could type for two or three hours on Wednesday, but I'll need to ration most of that for work.

So, look for short blog entries for the remainder of the week.

Bumper stickers

I came out of the Mandalay Cafe after dinner this evening and found a note on the windshield of my 1990 Honda Civic. It read:

"Love your bumper stickers! I vote we put Vetinari and Shrub in a locked room for a few hours...the first one to reduce the other to a gelatinous blob wins. P.S. I drive a Mac, too."

If this note has you scratching your head, it's because you aren't familiar with Lord Vetinari, the Machiavellian ruler ("Patrician") of the city-state Ankh Morpork in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. A fan of the Discworld series, and disgusted with the 2004 elections, I designed a limited-edition, very official-looking, red, white and blue bumper sticker that reads "Vetinari for Patrician." That's on my car, along with my Kerry/Edwards sticker and lots of Apple stickers, including "I'd rather be driving a Mac."

It's nice to know that somebody out there understands.

Well, duh!

When I was growing up, that was the favorite put-down from my beatnik cousin Laurie. It was her bored expression of total contempt for the views of teachers, parents, The System -- and anyone outside her own circle of terminally jaded teenage friends.

As someone who occasionally works in the area of marketing communication, I try to warn colleagues and clients against taglines, headlines, and subject lines that are so wimpy and self-evident that they simply beg for the "well, duh!" response. Or the puzzled "so what?"

Every few days I get an email from the Democrats, and I cringe. Today, feeling guilty about my utter lack of enthusiasm for the party that needs to be leading us away from the Bush mess, I put the subject lines of their emails to the "well, duh!" and "so what?" tests. Do any of these pique your interest?

• They deserve answers
• The fight starts now
• A victory for democracy
• Changing stories
• Rove has to go
• How are we doing?
• Actions speak louder than words
• Dividers, not uniters
• Show America the truth

Talk about preaching to the choir! Nothing about any of these subject lines makes me want to open the email and be subjected to another santimonious, droning, Democratic finger-wagging. At most, I can be grateful that these flaccid subject lines give plenty of warning of the well-intentioned drivel just a click away.

Now try these news reader subject lines:

• Let's just say the unlikely happens
• The problem with lawyers (part of an ongoing series)
• Will you help us?
• Clueless
• Hurry!
• The best thing I never said
• Hard to be nice (easy to be mean)
• Hot day hot stock
• It makes you sick?
• How to make a jillion dollars
• A pox on (most of) their houses

These are from the blogs of marketing guru Seth Godin and management guru Tom Peters, two of the best-read blogs online. These headlines make me at least want to click through and read a few paragraphs.

Now if only the Democrats would hire one of these guys.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Marden House

One of the most-viewed articles in today's Washington Post is The Wright Way, an article about the house Frank Lloyd Wright designed for Luis and Ethel Marden's land on a cliff overlooking the Potomac River in the late 1950s.

The house, which the Mardens never allowed on public view, was purchased in 2000 by the multi-millionaire property owner next door to preserve his own view of the river. Like many notoriously difficult-to-maintain Wright houses, it was in shabby condition. The Marden's representative carefully brokered an arrangement that encouraged the new owner to restore rather than remodel the house, and the Post covers the heartening story of how that deal came about.

Ethel Marden was my mother's boss (they were mathemeticians at the National Bureau of Standards) and my visits to the Mardens' house as a child had a profound impact on me. I came away with the belief that it was possible, and common, to have a house with curved banks of floor-to-ceiling walls, painted concrete floors, and a tree stump that came up through the floor to serve as a coffee table.

Of course, I never saw another house like Ethel and Luis's until I visited Wright's Phoenix studio, Taliesin West, this past summer, and felt immediately at home. In the Wright scheme of design, each house was supposed to embody particular principles of livability (regarding light, air circulation, and materials) but was customized to fit the way the homeowner lived. I listened to all this being explained at Taliesin and thought to myself "this sounds like a Mac!"

Tomato season

The good news in the garden this year is that the tomatoes like their toasty new digs on the south side of the house beside the brick chimney. We have already harvested a couple Early Cascades, some Black Cherrys, and this Costoluto Genovese:

About this blog

StatCounter tells me the following things about this blog:

It gets about 100 hits daily; 35 of those visits are "real"--between 30 seconds and an hour long. The rest are the blogger equivalent of "wrong numbers."

The most popular page is the homepage itself, with the most recent blog entry.

Most people come to The Mysterious Traveler Sets Out (TMTSO) from keyword searches (more on that later). They are also referred from my blogger profile, and from dougplummer.blogs.com.

Keyword searchers are interested in:
• Waring Ice Cream Parlor instructions
• Wolf stove wok grate
• Gary Broisma, dragostea din tei, and numa numa
• f1e2 error message (for the KitchenAid stove)
• catman cat scratching posts

75% percent of the searchers are coming to TMTSO from Google, with a few from MSN, Yahoo!, and Ask Jeeves; more than 60% of the visitors use Internet Explorer and more than 30% use Safari and Firefox; 93 percent of the visitors are from ISPs in the United States.

It rocks (the Kasbah)

On our way out for a quick teriyaki and shopping for a toaster oven, we found ourselves stopped in traffic on 15th Avenue NW, just south of 85th. I remarked to Zorg that someday we should try Kasbah, which had opened on 85th a few months earlier. He thought it sounded better than shopping, so we circled around, parked, and found ourselves enjoying an evening in Morocco.

When I asked Zorg if he thought we'd be eating in the traditional manner with our right hands, he chuckled. But a waiter arrived with a basin and a pitcher of water. We found ourselves washing our hands at the table, and eating all the courses--include my main course of stewed lamb and eggplant--with our hands.

We ordered the Kasbah D'Yaffa Feast, which is a five-course sampler. It begins with Harira, a tomato-lentil-chickpea soup, drunk from cups. That was followed by a marinated vegetable and carrot salad, scooped up on a foccaccia-like anise bread. The first course, B'stilla, a filo-dough pastry filled with a rich stew of chicken and vegetables flavored with cinnamon, was extremely rich. But the main courses were simple: Zorg chose a couscous with chicken and vegetables and I selected stewed lamb in a savory broth, topped with a round of friend eggplant. The meal ended with another handwashing, followed by diced fresh fruits in rosewater and ginger, and a fabulous strong jasmine tea with mint and citrus. The tea was poured into small glass mugs from a teapot held two or three feet above the mugs. Zorg said that was how tea was served in the village he lived in in Senegal.

I almost forgot the almond milkshake! It was what Indian restaurants call sweet lassi -- yoghurt, rosewater, and honey whipped with crushed ice -- but this version had ground almonds and almond extract as well. There's also an avocado milkshake on the menu, which I can only wonder about.

Kasbah is a large restaurant, divided into rooms: an entrance lounge, the red room, and the blue room, each one filled with layers of rugs. The tables--giant brass trays on sturdy wooden legs--are surrounded by sofas with big cushions and throw pillows and leather hassocks.

There were many couples at Kasbah, but also large parties of friends and families, all speaking French. (Since French, as well as Arabic and Berber, is spoken in Morocco, the waiters were serving them in French.)

I loved the subtle food; Zorg loved the atmosphere, complete with fully costumed wait staff and a professional belly dancer. "We dined like upper-class Moroccans," he said. "It was like going on vacation."

The political history of Islam

Zorg has plunged into a study of the political history of Islam with the aim of understanding the stance of mainstream Muslims toward terrorism. He's going through a stack of books, and will be posting reviews as he goes. Here's the first review, on The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam.

Stripes, herringbone, and spirals

Kaylee the cat stars in a study of patterns.

Blogrolling

I admit, I'm still trying to figure out how blogrolling works, why I might want to do it, and how I'd get it to work. This post from J. LeRoy helps.

Explore

What's not to like about this?

How to deal with Qwest DSL problems

I'll spare you the play-by-play of our 7-day ordeal getting Qwest to admit there was something wrong with our DSL and fix it. After four in-person visits and dozens of phone calls, the tech who came today was able to restore our download speeds. And, miraculously, a while after he left the upload speed was restored as well. (The trick turned out to be something about having someone at Qwest change our "tree," which translates into changing a port for a DSLAM; a DSLAM is something that sits deep in the system, behind the ATM networks.) Apparently a problem with a tree is very rare, so DSL providers want to thoroughly explore the more plausible options (customer forgot to put a filter on phone line, customer's computer is infested with bandwidth-hogging spyware, physical damage to inside or outside phone lines, screw-up at the customer's ISP) before looking inside their own system. And the customer with the rare problem gets to twiddle his or thumbs while answering the same questions about the system performance over and over and over.

Every Qwest DSL service technician we dealt with in person was a joy to work with, genuinely interested in solving our problem. And every Qwest rep we spoke with on the phone was either an idiot or a jerk.

(If you're into Qwest-bashing, here's an amusing evocation of the Qwest phone support experience from a former Qwest customer.)

On a more positive note, here are some of the resources that helped us out during the 7-day Qwest DSL nightmare:

Seanet.com, our excellent Seattle-area ISP. When Qwest phone reps kept disconnecting us, Seanet got through and pleaded our case.

Speakeasy.net, another Seattle ISP that has a very useful and attractive test for upload and download speeds.

Broadband Reports. This site has free speed tests (a limited number per day) and forums for dishing the up-to-the-minute dirt on all the major DSL providers. I registered (free) and got some excellent ideas for testing from the Qwest forum. With paid membership you get access to tools for testing line packet loss, ping tests, and all kinds of cool stuff. Which I hope we won't be needing any time soon.

I could do without hearing the phrases "trace route" or "dSLAM" again. I want to forget the internet address for configuring our modem. I want to stop thinking about how DSL works and just take it for granted -- like electricity, water, and air.

Here kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty

Smokey the big black cat has resigned himself to moving back in with us now that his preferred owner is in a nursing home. Each day for the past week he's spent more time on our front porch and less on Steve's. Last night he ate dinner inside and came upstairs and spent the night in his old bed -- a cushion on top of a small laundry hamper.

The whole thing reminds me of getting back together with an old boyfriend. You suddenly remember all the things he did that drove you nuts -- in Smokey's case, that would be meowing once at precisely 5 a.m. That one little meow means you have 60 seconds to get up, stumble downstairs, and let him out. If you fail to respond, he starts gouging the fir paneling in the bedroom.

Smokey is still getting the benefit of our sympathy, which means shredded chicken instead of regular cat food. Today I walked in to the kitchen to grab lunch and Smokey materialized. I gave him some chicken. Then Zoe appeared, ready to bug him. I opened a can of Fancy Feast and lured her to her dish on the far side of the diningroom. By then, old Betaille was climbing slowly and warily up the steps to the back porch. I went out and put food on her plate. I turned around and saw Sheba, who also wanted chicken. But when I put the chicken in her dish, Zoe sniffed it, which was a total turn off to Sheba, who stalked off to sulk. Smokey, ever the opportunist, moved over to get the second serving of chicken. Meanwhile, Kaylee had showed up and now she was trying to bug Smokey. I lured her across the room and gave her some Fancy Feast. But by that time, Zoe was trying to shove Betaille off the back porch, so Betaille came inside and I fed her again, this time in the diningroom. I heard a strange meow and there, in the living room, was Coppertop, the neighbor's cat who lives at our house during the day but (thank god) eats at home. At this point, I'd used up 15 minutes of my 20-minute lunch break feeding cats, I had Fancy Feast dripping down my wrist, and Sheba and I still hadn't eaten anything. I washed off, grabbed a yogurt, and went back to the office.

An image of peace and hope

This photo by Doug Plummer is about as beautiful an image as I've seen on the web in a long time.

Writing

There's no one doing lifestyle blogging on the web today who I'd rather read than Wil Wheaton.

He has the true writer's gift of making the everyday fascinating. Everyone's had the experience of looking at the commonplace and perceiving something special; the frustration comes when you try to share that experience with a reader or listener. The professional writer can do it; the truly gifted writer can do it in a way that seems effortless.

Wil Wheaton got me so excited about poker (he plays competitively, and recently wiped out spectacularly at a high stakes game in Vegas) that I'm activly looking for a weekly poker game in Ballard.

In this blog entry, Wheaton writes about writing in as down-to-earth a way as I've seen in a long time. He shares with the late Northwest writer Stephanie Feeney the even rarer gift of writing well with a positive tone. So much "postive" writing comes across gushy, superficial and Pollyannish. It's much easier for an aspiring writer to sound clever and incisive while carping and whining than to get it together to praise something -- just compare the shrillings of The Seattle Weekly and The Stranger with balanced understatement of The New Yorker or The New York Times Magazine.

Hiatus

The Mysterious Traveler will be on hiatus for a few days while she spends most of her waking hours on hold with Qwest tech support so they can once again assure her that they have no idea why, after their Internet service went down and they grudging admitted it was their fault and restored it, her 1500Kbps downloads are now running at 64Kbps.

Put your cat to work as a sundial

In the summer, our cat Betaille starts on the far left of the semi-circular bench seating in the morning, then follows the shade of the wisteria, reaching the midpoint of the seating by 2 p.m., as illustrated below:

If your cat is too lazy to follow the sun, here's a solution from the Halfbakery.

Inspiration for your next barbecue

African Tales.

Snore-cancelling headphones

Under the competitive influence of two gadget-obsessed colleagues I bought a pair of Bose noise-cancelling headphones for listening to music and DVDs while flying. They're quite extraordinary. Supposedly, they adjust to address and cancel whatever ambient noise is around you, then deliver your audio. Whatever it is they do, it works — to the point that if you just power them up in a crowded exhibition hall, you make your head an oasis of soothing quiet.

(To earphone novices, noise-cancelling earphones rely on battery power to generate the noise-cancelling effect.)

Turns out, Bose headphones also work to cancel out the sounds of nearby snoring. Sounds you might otherwise compare to a snorting bull about to flatten everything in his path are dimmed down to resemble the purring of a big, contented cat.

The only problem I've found with wearing the Bose headphones to bed is that I have to sleep on my back. But at least I'm sleeping.

Worse came to worse

I saw my neighbor's daughter and son-in-law stop by his house today and I went over to see how he was doing at the hospital. The daughter said they have decided that he will go from the hospital (where he went after another fall) to a nearby nursing home, and stay there. They don't want him to come home again because he's so physically fragile.

After they left, I looked over at his house, with his car parked out front, and the confused cat sitting on the front steps, and I felt very strange. It gave me an inkling of what it must have been like in Nazi Germany, or Poland, when your Jewish neighbors were taken away to a concentration camp. Of course Steve will not be humiliated, or tortured, or killed. But he was taken away against his will, and he won't won't be coming back.

I suspect Steve had been hoping that he'd die of a heart attack out in his backyard, among his raspberry bushes, or in his easy chair, watching a Mariners game on TV, or in bed, with Smokey curled up beside him. He is a fiercely independent person, and I can't imagine him taking well to living in a nursing home.

Episodes like this remind me to start studying up on poisonous plants for my own old age.

Vacation

I took a vacation day today, even though it meant missing a day from work during a period with daily deadlines. So many of my colleagues have missed three or four days because of illness that I'm hoping giving myself a three-day weekend may inoculate me against that.

The weekend itself was fairly relaxing, particularly Sunday when Zorg and I went for a long walk through the neighborhood. I came back carrying a beautiful wicker chair, $4 at a yard sale, on my head.

Sunday evening Bob came over to have chili with us, and afterwards we sat around discussing technology and constitutional law.

This morning I went to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned, then went grocery shopping and picked up a dozen tiny cupcakes at Verite Coffee/Cupcake Royale for my mom's birthday. Came home, set the cats free for the day, and enjoyed a few hours out in the yard. My mom came over at 4 with her iBook. I got all her system software updated via our Airport and broadband connection, then showed her how to rip CDs into iTunes. We even downloaded a song from the iTunes Music Store. Once she had that down, I gave her her birthday gift, a silver iPod mini. We had steaks and roasted sweet corn while the mini charged and updated, and then she got to try it out. She left around 8 with all her loot (including various iPod accessories) and my Patsy Cline CD collection, feeling very au courant. I suspect she'll be marching around Edmonds wearing the iPod tomorrow.

Just before dinner, I got a phone call from our elderly neighbor Steve. He's at University Hospital, having suffered another fall. He wanted us to check on Smokey, the cat we share with him. Sure enough, a distraught Smokey was on Steve's steps, wondering why no one was letting him in. We have Steve's keys, so we let Smokey in, where he ate dinner and came to grips with the fact that Steve wasn't there. Then we left, taking Smokey with us. I am going to try to feed him over here, but if worse comes to worse, I guess we can just take him over to Steve's a couple times a day.

Joe Wegstein's chili

Joseph Wegstein is best remembered for his landmark work in early digital image processing, but I associate him with a fabulous recipe for chili.

My mom worked with Joe at the National Bureau of Standards in DC in the 1950s. We're talking the early days of mainframe computing at the Bureau, where Joe served as acting chief of the Office for Information Processing Standards. I was acquainted with him through his recipe for a distinctive and delicious chili with made with ground beef, onions, tomatoes, kidney beans. My mom made (and froze) enormous batches of the stuff. Over the years, I've made dozens of variations of it (hippie-style, with beer; vegetarian; spiced with peppers and cumin; thickened with corn flour; and mixed half-and-half with an Italian tomato sauce, then seasoned with oregano, garlic, and cocoa to create Cincinnati chili). But the basic, simple chili is still my favorite. Brown the beef, add chopped onions and celery, add canned tomatoes, canned beans (and, if necessary, water), and cook for a hour or two.

Thinking liberal, acting like nitwits

Why do so many people think like liberals but react -- and vote -- like nitwits? Here's a theory.

Create your own South Park character

I don't even like South Park, but I couldn't result this wonderful German flash site where you can create your own South Park character.

More garage sale madness

John came over today to QA the berry-rhubarb pie and we walked down the alley to a neighbor's yard sale. She's selling her old farmhouse/beachhouse, probably because the folks on the wooded lot across the street are about to sell their property to a developer who plans to stuff seven new build-to-the-height-limit-and-beyond houses onto the view property.

It was a nice yard sale -- she had charming antiques and reproduction stuff: rugs, lamps, mirrors, and some great garden items. There was a huge, sturdy rectangular wicker basket, perfect for blankets and quilts. The price was high; I tried to haggle; she said the price was high because she didn't really want to sell it. When I offered the full price, she decided she couldn't part with the basket after all, and took it out of the sale. We all laughed.

I wonder how often that happens at yard sales?

Blogger ethics

Results of the Weblog Ethics Survey conducted as a thesis project at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore are now available, and well worth reading. It's a massive study; I'm only part-way through it.

Blues

British blues pioneer Long John Baldry died Thursday in Vancouver, B.C., where he'd lived for the past 25 years.

This article from Canadian Broadcasting describes his career and the enormous role he played in leading the early 1960s British blues scene that by the end of that decade became British rock and roll.

The article briefly mentions the voiceover work Baldry did in children's entertainment later in his career. You can hear him read "The Original Story of Winne the Pooh" on iTunes, where you can also purchase his early, astonishingly eclectic, album Everything Stops for Tea. It's a patchwork of Delta blues, Appalachian folk, gospel, ragtime, and English music hall, and includes a version of the New Orleans classic "Iko, Iko" that pretty much says it all about 1960's England trying to grok American folk music.

For Baldry's strongest blues performances, hunt for the 2005 re-release of his 1971 album It Ain't Easy, produced by Elton John and Rod Stewart.

Pies of summer

Two or three times every summer, my dad and I would set off on a drive to The Pie Lady's house. This was on Cape Cod in the 1950s, when big, turn-of-the-century country houses, always painted white, sat far back from the road, shaded by old oaks and surrounded by blue hydrangeas. The Pie Lady lived in just such a house. I imagined her in a large, sunlit kitchen, wearing an old-fashioned long dress and full apron, making her pies.

We never saw The Pie Lady. A glass pie case stood at the end of her crushed-clamshell driveway, in the shade of an oak, and filled with pies still warm from the oven: fruit pies, cream pies, and lemon meringue. You helped yourself.

We usually got blueberry, leaving payment (I believe it was $4) in a basket in the pie case. The lemon meringue was $5.

Although both my mother and I bake, we never made berry pies -- or perhaps we tried, and the blueberries were just too drippy? My mother's speciality was peach chiffon, a complicated pie created in stages with components (including perfect fresh peaches) that took most of the day to cook, chill, and assemble. I once started a peach chiffon late at night and arrived at the critical stage where you whip the egg whites at about 3 a.m. My first husband and I were living on the first floor of a multi-tenant Victorian in New Haven at the time; when I set to work with the electric beater it woke up everyone on the second and third floors.

The only time I made peach chiffon for Zorg he gave me a "this is sort of tasteless fluff" look, and I didn't try it again. It is rather subtle.

A year or so ago, I came across a terrific and easy pie crust recipe that one of the winners of the Puyallup Fair baking competition had shared with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It produces a crust a lot more elegant looking than the old reliable Crisco crust I've used, and more delicate than the oil-based crust I've employed for hearty apple-and-raisin pies. So when I found myself with 8 pints of extremely ripe assorted berries and four stalks of rhubarb in the fridge, I knew it was time to bake a berry pie.

A Google search yielded dozens of recipes for berry pie filling, but they all seemed to be for canning and using later. Searching under rhubarb and berry pies, I kept coming up with this basic recipe:

5 cups of berries
2 cups of chopped rhubarb
1-1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup flour

Mix the chopped rhubarb with the sugar and flour, then add the rest of the berries. Put it all in the pie shell, add a top crust and cut a few air holes into it. Bake at 425 degrees (F) for one hour.

It just doesn't get any easier than that. The berry mix was one cup of blueberries, two cups of blackberries, one cup of raspberries, and a cup of yellow berries that look like raspberries. I used an old-fashioned aluminum pie plate with a lip to catch the berry juice, and put the pie plate on a cookie sheet covered in foil to catch any drips. Halfway through the baking, I dropped an aluminum crust shield over it.

The result was a pie with an extremely complex sweet-to-sour flavor and a stunning claret color. Both people who've sampled it licked their plates!

Limbo

Indefatigable Northwest pundit J. Kingston (Jeff) Pierce has launched a blog, Limbo, with typically incisive and thorough essays on "Rove Rage," the death of actor James Doohan, and the historical impact of political wife and advisor Edith Bolling Galt.

I'm up to my ears at work this week, so I'll leave you in Jeff's capable hands.

The Nincompoop Quotient

Perhaps the most irritating quality of nincompoops is their unjustified but nevertheless unflagging self-confidence.

As you stare slack-jawed at the wreckage of their latest get-rich get-thin get-famous escapade, they're already hatching the next bird-brained adventure.

A few years back, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published the results of a series of studies by two research psychologists documenting what I think of as "the nincompoop phenomenon." People were given tests of logic, grammar and (I love this) humor, then asked to rate their own performance on the tests. The low performers consistently overestimated their performance, insisting they'd done well, while many of the high performers underestimated their scores.

"Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices," the researchers report, "but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it."

Hair-raising as this research is, I can't help but hope that a new personality measure will someday result from it, one far more useful to society than the Intelligence Quotient. The Nincompoop Quotient would indicate the degree to which a person habitually overestimates his or her performance. (Wouldn't you love to see the scores for members of the current administration?)

It's worth reading all the way through the study for the authors' horrifying speculation that a major cause of nincompoopism among their test subjects (college students) is environmental, stemming from lack of feedback about poor performance. It makes sense: If teachers in our culture are reluctant to give negative feedback, and all the students in a classroom get As and Bs, why wouldn't low performers think of themselves as "above average" performers?

Thanks to the always-excellent Netsurfer Digest for unearthing this study. Netsurfer Digest is subscription-only, but they offer a free trial subscription.

Picture this

This meme is adapted from a post by themorgan. For each question, type your answer into Google's image search and see what you get.

My answers:

1. Your age on your next birthday









2. Your favorite color






3. Your middle name









4. The place you lost your virginity









5. A weakness of yours









6. Your favorite fruit or vegetable








7. Your favorite animal










8. The town you live in







9. The name of a pet







10. Your high school nickname


11. One of your hobbies









12. The one you love

Migraine therapy

Six or seven years ago, I used to get migraines that lasted 24 hours (or 48, if I took the experimental migraine medicine that made them less severe) and ended up with me either throwing up or screaming in pain.

After a few months of acupuncture treatment in 1999, I reached a stage where I could get over a migraine in about 8 hours using a combination of Tylenol Sinus, a hot bath in a dark room, and black tea with sugar, followed by few hours of sleep. Now I'm often able to stop a migraine in a few hours using the first three ingredients, with no nap required. Pretty amazing. I come out of the migraine very, very tired and craving a dish of rice. (No idea what the rice thing is about, but it's intense!)

I've even been able, while traveling to and from San Jose, to fight off a migraine with just the Tylenol Sinus and tea, no hot bath, as long as I'm able to somehow get a lot of heat by wrapping up in a blanket on the plane or putting on wool socks and stay away from bright light.

Over the years, I've discovered that a few of our cats are "healing cats" that will stay with me while I'm suffering...or recovering. Kaylee -- usually an aloof cat -- turns out to be a "healing cat." She not only stayed with me during the migraine today, but when I got into bed she came over and put her head against mine, even though it can't have been a particularly comfortable way for her to nap!

I got over the headache just in time to go out and sit in the bright sun on the patio of the restaurant where the family was celebrating Zorg's birthday. I returned home feeling like an absolute dishrag, though. Back in the tub. Off to bed. Surely I'll have more energy tomorrow.

On the light side

"The System Administrator Song" -- warning to Mac users: This could cause flashbacks to your days working in a Windows environment.

Garden salvage rediscovered

pavers
Originally uploaded by Mysterious Traveler.

I'm tired of gagging on the exorbitant prices of pots and statuary at North Seattle nurseries and pretentious places like Lucca. (I knew the original owner of Lucca when it was on Aurora; he'd be appalled by the ugly dreck they're selling now at fleece-the-city-dweller prices.)

After spotting an ad for it in the July issue of Northwest Garden News, I went on a hunt for the eccentric, elusive garden salvage yard that appears and disappears like mirage on Highway 99 near the Lynnwood-Everett border. Several years back it occupied a lot just north of the Petticoat Junction dancewear shop; this time it turned up on the opposite side of the road, near the northwest corner of the Highway 99/148th intersection.

The stock includes estate-size fountains, statues, benches and such from as far away as Los Angeles; large slabs of marble; concrete pavers cast and dyed by the proprietor (see photo); sections of bamboo fencing; kitschy donkeys; sleek ebony African busts; oriental lanterns and pedestals; mermaids in ponds;little snails; huge orangutans and big turtles (Terry Pratchett fans, alert!); dragons; Celtic green men; brightly glazed Vietnamese pots; and slim angular terra cotta planters. In addition to the stoneware, there are several dozen huge pots (some plastic, some glazed terracotta) filled with salvaged plants, vines, shrubs and trees. At the back of the lot is a trailer with two poodles in the yard. In the middle of the lot, a large gazebo is filled with pottery, fountains, lighting, and shabby chic garden furniture.

My mother was with me on this visit and was appalled by the hodge-podge of styles. I was calculating how to get back there with a truck and pick up enough pavers to do a patio in our backyard. (A 12" by 12" paver is $5 in gray, $7.50 in either the green stains or the brown stains.)

Late for work

The glare of my office supervisor, standing in the doorway of my office as I came down the hall this morning, let me know it was 10:30, and I was way late for work.

She's not understanding, particularly about weekends. Being a cat, Sheba expects me to be in front of the computer promptly at 9:30 every morning, typing away and occasionally smiling at her as she hangs out in her faux-leopard bed between the PowerBook and the flat-screen Cinema Display. (Her clue that it's a weekend should be that the PowerBook is closed and I'm working on the iMac.)

What do you want to see happen?

Today I took the "Lominger" competencies assessment (an optional online program offered by my employer).

You rate yourself on 67 competencies, assigning each one to a category: "top strengths" "skilled" "less skilled" or "do not use."

I had more "skilled" areas than "less skilled," but only six "top strengths." Five of my strengths were pretty much natural aspects of my personality, but one was something I've had to struggle with and work on in the course of my career — "Boss Relationships."

The keys to "boss success" I've discovered are these:

1. There is nothing (legal) you can do to change a boss who is a jerk. Get to work immediately on a transfer within the organization or find a job elsewhere, before you are transformed into a whining loser.

2. If you work for a good boss, your job is very simple: Figure out what that boss needs you to do, and do it. Periodically check with him or her to make sure you're on track, and make any necessary course corrections. If your boss starts going around the bend (unfortunately, this happens) refer to Key #1.

3. No matter how wonderful your boss is, there will always be problems and miscommunications. The magic words for those instances, given to me by a former colleague, Julie Swor, are: "What do you want to see happen?" Try it. It really is magic.

Test your brakes

If you drive I-5 between Bellingham and Seattle, you know what's going to happen as you approach the city of Everett, don't you? Even at 2 in the morning. Geoff Duncan's Theory of Everett-thing explores the phenomenon.

More ice cream

I had a vacation day today. Much of it was spent scratching my head over problems with phone and internet wiring, and moving furniture in the basement den, but I got to have a Thai lunch with the lively Fremont noodle group (a gathering of home office folks) and dinner at Sam's Sushi with Zorg.

I'd parked at the west edge of Fremont for the lunch this noon and walked in. On the way back, I stopped at the new soft-serve ice cream bar next to Deluxe Junk. (Not to be confused with the gelato place, just around the corner by the statue of Lenin, which I haven't tried yet.)

The soft-serve is real high-quality dairy (not the scary plastic does-not-melt stuff) and delicious. They have kid-size servings (bought one) and those waxy chocolate and butterscotch dips (didn't try one), plus they do floats. Very cool. I asked if they might have frozen custard this summer; the manager said the machines can handle it, but extra egg and butterfat in frozen custard would make it difficult to clean the machines. Frozen custard from Kopp's, Ted Drewes, Sheridan's, and Culver's, is a midwestern obsession, but pretty rare in Washington state.

Sheridan's has a store at 14389 SE Mill Plain Blvd. in Vancouver, WA, and the P-I reports that Snoqualmie Gourmet Ice Cream will be producing frozen custard for sale at Larry's Market soon. Chocolate frozen custard is on my list of 10 favorite foods.

I'm melting!

Start the holiday weekend off with a seasonal meme: What flavor ice cream are you?

I'm chocolate chip!

New Blogger feature...

...easy uploading of images from your computer or from the web (by URL). Here's a recent portrait of Zoe (Big Stripe).

Let's go out for cold dead fish

To read the New York Times online, you must register. But registration is free, and David Pogue's weekly Circuits column (also available to Times members by email subscription) is one of the reasons to sign up.

This week, Pogue presents readers' comments about his June 13 column on the inanity of technology product names such as "IEEE-139" and "802.11."

"Engineers are responsible," one reader said, hypothesizing: "If HP were selling sushi, they would describe it as cold dead fish -- accurate and unappetizing."

"No matter what anyone else tells you, PCMICIA stands for People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms," another quipped.

Pogue also heard from Michael Jonas Teener, one of the engineers who named FireWire, and passes along the story-behind-the story of how that engineering team got it right.

Finally, Pogue offers a link to Scott Kelby's new spoof ad for the iPod Flea and its many, many accessory kits, including the Flea Collar. The spoof video hasn't turned up anywhere else online, so, once again, Pogue has the exclusive. (For whatever reason, I had to click on the link three times, but it launched eventually, and was worth it ).

The mysterious fava

One of the signs of early summer at the vegetable market is fava beans. They look a bit like limas and come in big, soft, downy pods. Once you release the beans from the pod, the light green outer hull (which is bitter) has to be peeled to reveal the darker green bean inside. (It's important to get fresh local beans, as tired favas can be dull or bitter all the way through.)

Where I lived in Italy (Genoa), the spring favas were shelled, peeled and eaten at the table with coarse dried salame, cut into chunks, accompanied by a robust olive oil and bread.

Dolce Vita, a website on Italian travel, describes several ways to enjoy fresh fava beans. They don't mention the Genoese style, but they describe a Tuscan presentation, using thin shavings of parmesan in stead of salame, that's similar.

Before the "discovery" of the Americas, favas were the only beans available in Europe. A small percentage of people of Mediterranean ancestry have a condition (G6PD deficiency) which can cause them to have an unpleasant, even dangerous, reaction (called hemolytic anemia) when the eat favas, so I remain a little reluctant to feed them to guests.

I bought favas at the Ballard Farmers Market this morning and we had them at dinner. They were delicious, and Zorg seems none the worse for the exposure. Bon apetito!

Need a charming bungalow?

Friends of ours are selling their Craftsman bungalow in South Green Lake (Tangletown). It's on a side street just a few blocks from Zoka, and very convenient to the bus line to downtown.

Glow, little kitty

Betaille is back from her radiation treatment at the Feline Hyperthyroid Clinic in Shoreline. I can't imagine that the treatment takes effect so quickly, but Betaille certainly seems a much improved cat. Instead of huddling under the porch with a desperate, disoriented look in her eyes, she's coming in the house, curling up in one of the cat beds in my office, and ignoring Zoe's bullying. Perhaps she's just grateful to be back from the clinic, which must have seemed like a strange place to her. A number of our cats have been strays and accustomed to changes of scenery. Betaille has been with us since she was 5 weeks old, and her only adventures trips to the vet (the same vet for 15 years).

Betaille, who is quite small and has had impaired kidney function all her life, was given a low-end dose of radiation therapy. Our vet will check her in a month or two to see if her thyroid levels are down to normal and her kidneys are "normal" for her.

It's nice go out the back door and see her sitting happily on her cedar bench in the yard.

10 years

Zorg and I celebrate our 10-year wedding anniversary today. We also celebrated it last night, when we went out on the town for a fabulous dinner at Ruth's Chris steakhouse followed by an off-beat comedy show (Margaret Cho's "Assassin") at the Paramount.

A heart-felt "thank you" to all the friends who have supported us, individually and as a pair, in our marriage!

The 10th anniversary commemoration is traditionally tin or aluminum. Must be why the cats had us several cans of Fancy Feast waiting for us in the kitchen this morning.

More lingerie

I was in San Jose for a meeting last week and was astonished when I glanced across the conference table and saw one of the women marketing execs wearing what looked like a nightgown: a low-cut camisole in shiny lavender satin with spaghetti straps. Since she was wearing it with designer jeans and a casual beige cotton jacket, my first thought was that perhaps she was having a nervous breakdown and had forgotten her bra and shirt while getting dressed.

My concerns about her mental health (though not her business sense) were allayed by a Cox News Service article in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporting that satin camisoles are now the dernier cri in officewear.

I now find myself trying to think of a situation in which a low-cut, bras-less satin camisole would be appropriate for the workplace. Perhaps if you worked in a bordello? Or perhaps if you had the body of a movie star? My colleague, unfortunately, falls into neither of these categories. She just looked like a desperately single business bimbo who's been reading too much Cosmo.

Girls only

A few months ago the online community of women folkdancers to which I belong had a discussion of bras. It wasn't pretty. The marketing line about bras is that 50 percent of American woman wear the wrong size of bra; the consumer line is that no manufacturer makes bras that are comfortable and attractive and actually fit (if they accidentally do, they seem to promptly discontinue that model).

I didn't leap into the online discussion because I didn't have much to contribute except more gripes: I'm small but busty and almost all the bras available in my size make me look like I should be wearing a horned helmet and singing Wagnerian opera. The rest of them look good only if I don't try to move or breathe.

Well, I finally found a no-wire bra that has support but doesn't look like it was designed and constructed by Orcs in Mordor.

Chico's, the boutique chain that sells sort of ethnic/slinky stuff for middle-aged gals has started a lingerie line called Soma.

The Soma line includes the no-wire "Agnes" bra that is just drop-dead gorgeous: a smooth, silky fabric; seamless cups; and it even comes in black! They also have several underwire models. Not cheap, but not as expensive as Wacoal bras at Nordies. (And if you're a Chico's Passport member, they've always got coupon deals going.)

I can't image that any guys have been reading a blog entry on bras, but, if you have, feel free to pass the info along to the woman in your life. If you want to order one for her yourself, you're either very experienced at that or completely out of your mind. Anyway, here's the eHow guide to buying lingerie as a gift. Step one of that ought to be enough to keep you busy for a while.

Wired

Qwest now offers ultra-fast DSL in our area and it turns out to be cheaper than the moderately accelerated (but increasingly flakey) DSL we've been getting via Covad. Taking no chances, we ordered the Qwest DSL for the fax line while keeping the Covad DSL live on the phone line until we could make sure the Qwest service was working for all our various ethernet and Airport configurations.

Finally got it nailed down this a.m. when my VPN service for work was configured, and now it's farewell to Covad. I just checked the download speed using CNET's bandwidth test and it tested faster than a T1 line.

Now to do something about the Ethernet cables running up and down the hall. Zorg got some longer cables from Radio Shack and we'll run the cables through the basement this weekend.

Kudos to our ISP, Seanet, which told me about the Qwest deal and stayed on the line while I dealt with the Qwest sales airhead who said things like:

"Is this for Windows 2000, or Windows XP?" (Me: "No.")

"With this service, you get MSN as your ISP." (Me: "I think not. Did you notice this call to you was placed by the ISP I already have, Seanet?")

I just got the Qwest bill, replete with hidden costs like the $9.95 shipping and handling charge for the modem I purchased from them. Grrrr.

Incidentally, the Mac OS X Tiger install on the PowerBook last night went smoothly. Take Control of Upgrading to Tiger included Joe's Compromise Method, midway between an archive-and-install and an erase-and-install, and it worked for me. I haven't even had to use the Restore Missing Files advice.

Yet.

Great writing

One of the nicest pieces of writing I've come across in a long time is Joe Kissell's introduction to his new book Take Control of Upgrading to Tiger for (Take Control Publishers).

"Upgrading your Mac's operating system is a bit like removing your house's existing foundation to add a new garage underneath -- something that happens frequently here in San Francisco," he begins, and goes on to describe the processes.

This works well for most home owners (and Mac owners) but can, on occasion, go wrong. Kissell, who says he installed Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger 44 times while developing the book, promises his readers "a fanatastic experience" upgrading their own computers. "This ebook is your anti-anxiety guide to every step of the process," he says.

I used Kissell's earlier Take Control of Upgrading to Panther while upgrading my iMac and PowerBook to 10.3 (Panther). When 10.4 came out, I worked without a net, simply making a bootable copy of the iMac hard drive and installing Tiger using only the disk's guidance. However, I'm approaching the upgrade of the PowerBook a good deal more cautiously, and am going to study Joe's ebook before clicking any irrevocable buttons. And, of course, I made a bootable copy of the existing 10.3.9 PowerBook hard drive. Should it turn out that any essential apps on the PowerBook don't work in Tiger, I can always hook up the hard drive and boot into 10.3.9.

FireWire external hard drives. Backup software. Don't leave home without them.

Animals, wild and domestic

As the animal control folks remove an army of squirrels from our friend Geoff's attic, our next door neighbor has apparently achieved a humane end to our local raccoon infestation. Yesterday he caught the second raccoon in a large "live trap" and carted her off to the same park where he had earlier released her mate. A happy reunion, we hope.

Meanwhile, on the domestic pet front, we had good news that our elderly prima donna cat Betaille qualified for radiation treatment for her hyperthyroid condition. We went through this with Bosco the Mystery Cat eight years ago, and were very pleased with the results.

Bosco, a happy hypochondriac, apparently thought his three days at the cushy hyperthyroid treatment facility were a spa vacation (they cost about as much). Betaille, who is set off by the most minor changes in her environment, will probably not be such a happy camper. She is currently in a snit, in part because of the raccoon battles next door, and in part because one of our year-old kittens, Zoe (Big Stripe), is bullying her.

Zoe doesn't hiss or swat, she just "bumps" other animals, sort of herding them around. She is now taking this to an extreme. I told Zorg last night that I'd seen her bump a life-size concrete cat statue in the garden and knock it flat. Zorg looked mildly surprised, and said "But I picked it up!" Apparent she is now bullying the concrete statue repeatedly. Either she's not very bright, or she's using it as some kind of warning to real cats.

Betaille's snit involves refusing to eat unless I keep the kittens out of sight and sit beside her while she dines. I guess it could be worse.

Whatever makes you happy

In celebration of the 2-year anniversary of The Mysterious Traveler Sets Out, here is a meme about posessions that I developed based on a "Domains" profile in a recent issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Most treasured object in the house:
What is always with you:
Broken item that you can't part with:
Most recent bargain or yard sale find:
Newest gadget:
Best award:
Most distinctive family heirloom:
Best recent gift received:
Next big purchase:
Most-read book:
Most valuable possession:
The object you most identify with:

If you use this meme, please email me either a copy of your answers or a link to your blog entry.

Here are my responses:

Most treasured object in the house:
My computer's hard drive.

What is always with you:
My glasses. I don't think I've ever left the house without them. (I certainly wouldn't get very far.)

Broken item that you can't part with: The red and blue quilt I made for myself in college. Some of the material is too worn to wash, so I can't use the quilt. But I can't get rid of it, either.

Most recent bargain or yard sale find:
A Northwest Indian-motif green glass paperweight.

Newest gadget:
iPod shuffle. It was a gift from my employer.

Best award:
Framed poster of an Apple "LP" commemorating the 1,000,000th download at the iTunes Music Store. (I was on the Music Store launch team.)

Most distinctive family heirloom:
An antique wooden spelling toy that my father used as a child.

Best recent gift received:
Silver earrings my mother bought for me at the Folklife Festival.

Next big purchase:
Some sort of hutch/buffet for our dining room.

Most-read book:
The Bone is Pointed, by Arthur Upfield. I read through Upfield's Napoleon Bonaparte detective series every two or three years. The Bone is Pointed is one of my favorites.

Most valuable possession:
My engagement ring.

The object you most identify with:
Definitely the iMac!

Another raccoon ruckus

After we installed the raccoon-proof cat door, the two raccoons that had been plundering our basement for cat food moved on to our neighbors' basement for easier pickings.

Well, the guy next door wasn't going to take any shit from a raccoon! He put a catch-and-release trap in their basement and caught one of the coons Wednesday night. He then drove it over to the park on the other side of the Cut (our local canal) and released it.

Tonight at 10 there was the most horrible screaming out back. It wasn't a cat; it sounded like a dog yelping. I turned on the back porch light and made sure our cat Betaille was OK. Looking over to the neighbors' back yard, I saw two green eyes up in the air. The neighbors flipped on their porch lights and I realized it was a raccoon up in their apple tree, shrieking piteously.

The poor thing obviously knew that its mate had gone into their basement and never come out again. It was hard not to feel bad for the bereaved raccoon. I hope it will go into the basement, get trapped, and be released in the park and be reunited with its mate. I didn't mind two friendly raccoons in the neighborhood, but I'm definitely disturbed by one frantic one.

Bird identified; news of the day

Nina tells me that the bird whose photo I posted on Flickr is...a flicker. Too funny!

Quick update: Started the day at the annual Camp Fire Boys and Girls breakfast at the Westin, then walked over to the Seattle Art Museum to attend Jesse James Garrett's web architecture seminar, The Elements of User Experience. At lunchtime we dashed upstairs for the opening of the museum's Isamu Noguchi scuptural design exhibit. It's a small but dramatic exhibit and the museum has a special exhibit store with Noguchi lamps and furniture reproductions and Noguchi-inspired fountains, dinnerware, jewelry, etc.

I arrived home just in time to take delivery of my vintage patio furniture, which had been electro-painted at New Finishes. The shipment included a stray retro patio chair I'd spotted at the shop and asked them to throw in with my order. Pictures to come soon!

Can anyone identify this bird?

Bird
Originally uploaded by Mysterious Traveler.

This large, colorful bird sat on top of the shed outside my office window for 10 minutes this morning. Anyone have any idea what kind of bird this is?

Is this the solution?

I am now a couple weeks behind in my life and despairing of ever catching up.

Is this the answer?

Visitors

coons
Originally uploaded by Mysterious Traveler.

We took quite a few pictures. Two cameras, both with flash. The raccoons could have cared less.

Gardening

That's about it.

Watergate revisited

I was born in Washington D.C. in 1954 and lived there until I went away to college in 1972 and my folks retired to Cape Cod a year later. I was just a few years too young to be of the Vietnam generation. If any one national event characterized my coming of age, it wasn't the war -- it was Watergate.

I grew up in a family of federal employees. My father was an official in the National Aeronautics and Space Adminstration. An agency of the visionary Kennedy-Johnson era, N.A.S.A. was considered a costly frippery by the Nixon White House, a group never known for setting its sights high. My mother was a systems analyst with the National Bureau of Standards, and she saw her star rise when she was assigned to the Nixon White House to work on system to track the administration's controversial wage-price freeze. When her team received a commendation from vice president Spiro Agnew, my (increasingly left-wing) father was appalled. At about this time his brother, a senior official with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, retired and devoted himself to volunteer work with a number of liberal organizations, including Common Cause.

When Watergate (the scandal was named after the upscale Watergate office complex where the initial illegal break-in masterminded by the Nixon gang took place) unfolded right in the pages of our local newspaper, my father and my uncle were avid followers of the story. I always imagined that Watergate source the Washington Post had nicknamed "Deep Throat" was someone much like my uncle -- a bright man who had grown cynical about government and who decided to have his fun by using what he knew to orchestrate the downfall of Nixon and his gang of thugs. I wondered if my dad or my uncle knew him.

When W. Mark Felt, a former top official at the FBI, revealed today that he'd been Deep Throat, I was delighted. Now 91, Felt was exactly of my father and uncle's generation. A handsome, slim man, he even looked like them. His witty, understated way of speaking reminded me of them, as well.

Too bad they didn't live to see Deep Throat's identity revealed. Felt's motives were his own but, where they intersected with those of Woodward and Bernstein, they made history, elevating journalism and exposing corruption at the highest level of government. Now the pendulum is swinging the other way (decreasing scrutiny of the government, and revelations of corruption in journalism) but it's heartening to be reminded of the heady days of Watergate.

This 1992 article from The Atlantic sets Felt's story in context.

The Mysterious Traveler eats out

This morning I had breakfast in an shabby greasy spoon in a semi-industrial area of a small town in Eastern Washington. No, wait, the place was in Ballard -- it just looked, felt, and smelled like a greasy spoon in some dead-end town in the sticks.

The water glasses are smudged, the mugs unmatched and dinghy, the counter is worn, and the stove looks like it hasn't been cleaned since the World's Fair was in town. Chipped knick-knacks are scattered all over the counter. The only thing new in the place is a coat of Pepto-Bismol pink paint on the wood-paneled walls.

This was not my first time in the dive I'll call the Time Warp Cafe. I had breakfast there in January, and was absolutely fascinated. I expected to walk out the door and be back in 1962. But no such time shift ensued.

Somewhat to my surprise, the place is still in business. This time I ordered two eggs scrambled and an English muffin. They tasted the way food used to taste back before anyone knew about cholesterol. The tea is good, and, since I'm not a coffee drinker, some day I'll have to bring someone along to test that out. It's definitely not Starbucks.

Since much of what I'm saying about the place could be construed as pejorative, and would surely hurt the feelings of the woman who recently re-opened the place, no name or location will be given. Curious? Not particularly fussy about decor? Ready to enter the culinary time warp? Contact me and I'll take you there some morning.

Smartass or Starving Artist?

"The Personality Defect Test will provide an accurate analysis of your true personality, but it will do so in a manner that is very insulting, cynical, and intentionally humorous."

I came out mid-way between a Haughty Intellectual and a Starving Artist and, of course, I'd just love to see everyone else's scores. On second thought, if you score as a Sociopath, don't feel you have to share.

Sun rain sun rain sun rain

The Berrymans, a Wisconsin folk duo, have a song called "Bird, Bird, Bird" in which they chronicle driving through a rural small town. The portion about the outskirts runs:

House, house, trailer, yard sale
Trailer, trailer, yard sale
Tavern, high school, bike trail
Gas pump, trailer, yard sale
Road construction, EAT NOW
Strip mall, pig farm, sow, sow
Silo, tractor, barn, plow
End construction, cow, cow.

This same narrative technique, applied to the Seattle weather of the past seven days, would sound like:

Rain rain rain rain sun sun
Clouds rain clouds rain sun sun
Rain rain rain rain stars rain
Stars rain stars rain sun rain.
(repeat daily)

Weeds grew three feet this week, and the grass, about six inches. (In the case of our rather enfeebled grass, the grass grew only three inches while the invasive weeds spread like oil slicks across the yard and plunged their roots down several feet.)

Attempting to garden on Saturday, I spent more time rushing my tools to shelter in the shed and lugging them out again than I did actually gardening. My major garden project, setting out soaker hoses in the flower beds, seemed outright bizarre, though I'm sure there'll be a use for them this year -- perhaps by August.

As the skies darkened for the second or third downpour late yesterday afternoon, I was amused to see three neighbors, who had been away on errands earlier in the day, emerge from their houses (clad insanely in shorts and t-shirts) and start their gasoline mowers. They then all mowed right through the rainstorm.

I suspect that the shaggiest lawns in the neighborhood belong to people with electric mowers who have been too cautious to risk electrocution.

Oops -- sun's out -- gotta run.

Extending the olive branch

I bought a small olive tree today from a Ballard neighbor who sells them on Craig's List.

Since our yard is small, the plan is to put the tree in a large terracotta pot and keep it pruned to a flame shape rather than letting it spread. This meant removing one shoot that was coming up alongside the main trunk.

I snipped the shoot and found myself in the unusual position of being able to literally extend an olive branch. I went inside and extended it to Zorg.

"Did we have a fight?" he asked.

I asked Zorg, who has a background in religious studies, where the expression "to extend an olive branch" comes from.

Zorg explains:

The ideas of offering an olive branch as a sign of peace, and the dove as a symbol of peace, come from the story of Noah. The story begins in Genesis 6 and tells how God looked down on the world of man and found it corrupt and wicked, but "Noah found favor in the eyes of God." So God decided to wipe the earth clean of corruption and begin anew with Noah and his family.

God told Noah about his plan and gave him the instructions for a boat (or ark) that would hold 2 of each animal on earth. He said, "I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made." Noah was 600 years old when he built the ark.

Another interesting biblical factoid is that before the flood, men lived long lives. Noah was still middle aged by those standards. Ultimately, he lived 950 years. (The oldest man of course, was Methusaleh who clocked 969 years. Look at Genesis 5 to see how long the patriarchs lived. ) After the flood, the span of a man's life was whittled down to "three score and ten years" (70 years), according to Psalm 90:10. The psalmist laments of folks living four score and ten years that "yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." In other words, it ain't no fun to get old.

In Genesis 8:6-12 the story goes, "After 40 days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him."

The interpretation I heard was that the dove did not return because it had found sufficient land and foliage to sustain itself. Thus, Noah knew that the flood waters were receding.

In Genesis 9:7, after Noah and his family have come out of the ark and released the animals, God repeats the first commandment he gave to Adam and Eve, "be fruitful and multiply." He then promised that he wouldn't destroy the Earth again, and in Genesis 9:12 he set the rainbow as a sign of the covenant.

Genesis 9:18 tells us, "The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the earth." If you're feeling sorry for their wives over having to do all that work, at least they only had to do 1/3 of what Eve had to do!

In Greek mythology predating the Bible, the olive branch symbolized wisdom and peace, and is often associated with the goddess Athena, who gave an olive tree to the city that was to become Athens. Historically, Greek ambassadors offered an olive branch of peace to indicate their intentions.

The olive branch appears in flags and symbols in many Westerns and Near Eastern countries and organizations, including:

• the United Nations symbol, with the world flanked by a wreath of crossed olive branches;
• the Great Seal of the USA, where the eagle carries in its right talon an olive branch with 13 leaves to represent peace between the original member States (this also appears on the flag of the Virgin Islands);
• the flag of the league of Arab States, which has an upturned crescent encircled by a gold chain and olive wreath;
• the flag of Cyprus, which has crossed olive branches beneath a map of the island to represent peace between the Greek and Turkish populations; and
• the flag of Eritrea, which includes a golden olive wreath and stem, originally inspired by the flag of the United Nations

The olive branch also appears on the US Presidential Seal, where the eagle clutches the branch in one talon and a group of arrows in the other talon. I found it heartening to read that in 1945 President Harry Truman had the seal redesigned so that the eagle no longer faced the arrows but now faces the olive branch.

I'm in love

with my personalized Google start page. Want one?

48 hours behind

Would everyone else please just hibernate for 2 days so I can catch up?

A little wish list

I wish that

1. Bombich software would update CarbonCopyCloner so it would work in Mac OS X Tiger
2. All my Weblog Meetup friends would put RSS or Atom feeds in their blogs (you know who you are!)
3. Betaille, our elderly cat, would stop being such a prima donna

Something new and different

Most gadgets that purport to be revolutionary improvements over a traditional tool rarely live up to their reputations, and those that actually do the job a bit better (such as Cuisinarts) usually turn out to be fragile, difficult to clean and maintain, or prohibitively expensive.

One of the few exceptions is the Oxo Smooth Edge Can Opener.

It's an innovative manual opener that offers three advantages over the traditional can opener:
• As the name suggests, it leaves a smooth edge when it separates lid from can (no jagged edges to handle as you wash or dispose of the can).
• After the lid is cut, you use a little pincer tool on the edge of the opener to lift the lid completely off the can (eliminates the spraying of the contents of the can that usually occurs when you flip a lid back).
• The cutting mechanism rarely comes in contact with the contents of the can, so it needs minimal cleaning.

It was the third point that sold me, since I loathe cleaning tuna fish juices out of the gears of a traditional can opener. That always seems to take repeated scrubbing with lots of soap and hot water, and once the gears stop smelling fishy, they start smelling soapy. And, in a few weeks, the frequently washed can opener has unattractive (and probably unsanitary) corroded gears.

The Oxo is so subtle to use that the first time I tried it I didn't realize that the lid had been separated from the can. Eventually, I took a chance and applied the little pincers and the lid lifted completely off, leaving me staring into smooth pool of olive oil filled with Italian tuna. Yum!

A good day

Nothing, but nothing, can make you appreciate a quiet Sunday morning, cornflakes and tea at the kitchen table, than a 9 a.m. call from a friend who is somewhat blearily asking for a recommendation for an emergency plumbing service!

I sent them to a service we'd summoned three years ago to remove a backlog of dead rodents from the sewer pipe of the new house we'd just purchased. (Phew!)

If I'd been able to find a copy of Checkbook, the local consumer magazine we subscribe to, I'd have activated my account for their website and checked their ratings. Unfortunately, you need your number from the mailing label to set up a web account. Grrrr.

We have an fine regular plumber, but he does remodeling projects and is not likely to zip over on Sunday morning to troubleshoot an emergency unrelated to a current project.

Steady rainfall appears to preclude another day of gardening, but I am enjoying the sunshine vicariously. I can see it, across the Sound, on the Olympic mountains, and am thinking of some lucky Bainbridge Island gardener having coffee out in her garden.

Weekend visitor

Zorg is in Eugene for the weekend at a family event; I stayed in town to do some volunteer work for the upcoming Folklife Festival, get my mom's condo ready for her return from Florida next weekend, and get the soaker hoses set out in the garden.

I got back from Folklife and the condo work around 3 and gardened until 8:30 p.m., aided by all the cats and the neighbors' 2-year-old. Then I took a shower and set about preparing a salad for dinner. The arugula has pretty well bolted, so I decided to go out and cut it all down and add it to the salad. Of course, as soon as I stepped out the back door, Betaille dashed for the cedar bench -- her "designated petting place." I sat down with her and, while petting her, admired the garden. It was nearly 9 p.m., but between the bright sky, the quarter moon above the pear tree, and the back porch lights, I could have read a book out there.

I certainly had no trouble noticing the 40-pound raccoon sauntering toward us across the back yard. He looked right at me, and just kept on coming. Betaille glanced at him, then went back to getting petted, which didn't reassure me at all. If they were friends, he might come right over to the bench and say hello to us. Or he might hang a right at the back stairs and go up to see if there were any cat food on the porch. All I could think was: This is a huge raccoon.

"Help!" I squeaked, although there was no one to hear me.

Hearing my voice, the raccoon stopped six feet away. He looked a bit disappointed, as if thinking "I'll have to swing back by here later." He wheeled around and began to stroll back the way he had come, disappearing into the side yard. I jumped up, grabbed the greens, and scurried up the stairs into the kitchen. If Betaille wants to share her dinner with the raccoons, I don't want to know about it.

Test your geekiness

I want so much to write about good and bad fences, but have to wait until I've take some pix to illustrate that entry. I'm headed up to Edmonds to do some work on my mom's condo tomorrow; if I take back roads through North Seattle, that should yield some fence pictures.

In the meantime, how geeky are you?

My scores:
Academic Geekiness: Highest
Internet Geekiness: High
Geekiness in Love: Moderate
SciFi Geekiness: Moderate
Fashion Geekiness: Low
Music Geekiness: Low
Gamer Geekiness: None
General Geekiness: None
Movie Geekiness: None

Wedding portents

The afternoon before Zorg and I got married, I saw a huge rainbow in the southern sky. The night before Nina and Mike got married last summer, Zorg and I saw a buck beside the highway in Bellingham. And the night before my cousins Alex and Mary's wedding in Phoenix, we saw a coyote by the roadside.

I was trying to remember if I saw anything the night before my first wedding, to the wrong husband, 20 years ago. But all I can remember is that during the ceremony itself the sky turned black and a huge thunderstorm erupted over the chapel. And I thought I heard a voice say "This is a mistake."

Pain in the...

Don't file a workman's comp claim in Washington unless witnesses saw a stack of the company's servers fall on you. If I'd said I'd injured my wrist gardening, I'd have had surgery by now to remove the cyst from my tendon. As it is, I'm stuck in painful limbo and likely to remain there for many weeks.

After booking an appointment for me and taking the number of my workman's comp claim over the phone, the incredibly crass and insensitive staff at the surgeon's office informed me when I showed up for my appointment that I couldn't see the surgeon. The reason: I didn't bring a letter from workman's comp saying that they would pay for my surgery.

I pointed out that they hadn't asked to me bring such a letter, that I was there for an assessment, not the surgery, and that my excellent health insurance will pay for the surgery if workman's compensation denies coverage. And I offered to pay for the assessment in cash.

They could have cared less. The rude nurse who bustled me out of the waiting room into the hall seemed to take pleasure in assuring me that it would likely take up to three months ("or more, if they extended the claim review" she said gleefully) for the state to either decide that I'm eligible to have treatment or deny the claim so the health insurance will kick in.

In the mean time, I can't use a scissors, a hammer, or garden clippers without searing pain in my wrist. Needless to say, when the workman's comp insurance issue is eventually resolved, I will not be returning to that surgery practice for the operation.

Divorce, office style

I admit that I sometimes confuse my work life with my home life. And, from that perspective, I just went through an amicable divorce. A recent re-org, though minor from the company's perspective, split my team.

We were a team that had been serving two increasingly disparate business groups. I went through each workday tormented by the impatient toe-tapping of whichever group was not being served at that micro-second, and interrupting any project longer than an email reply to deal with some mini-crisis from the "other" side.

Mercifully, the re-org has me re-focused on just one group's priorities, and already it feels much better -- though I'm still peeling away the tentacles of the other group from various directories, databases, and corporate travel and expense systems.

My boss went with the other group, and one of my favorite colleagues is my new boss. Now that the split is complete, there are only two of us left from the original team I joined five years ago. I feel like a tribal elder.

Off to Phoenix

We leave tomorrow for my cousin's wedding in Phoenix. This'll be my first time in Arizona. I'm told we'll have time to explore a bit on Saturday, since the wedding isn't until evening. Stand by for pictures of those stereotypical cactus.

Birthdays, weddings and anniversaries

I haven't been blogging much because of wrist pain. It's finally been diagnosed as a cyst on my tendon, and I'll be seeing a surgeon Thursday to talk about having that removed. Not only has this been cramping my blogging style, it's been getting in the way of my gardening. To say nothing of slowing me down at work.

We are into the birthday season. Tonight Zorg and I went to a dinner party at the local community center in honor of the 90th birthday of our neighbor Steve, the retired police detective with whom we share Smokey the cat. Steve's family and friends had a great photo display, including pictures of Steve as a young police officer in the 1940s. I collected some great neighborhood stories. Quite a few people well into their 80s, but all in fabulous shape.

Poor Smokey. We returned home from the party to find him wandering sadly up and down the street, wondering where all his owners had gone. He had been reduced to playing with the children across the street, and came in with us for a while to visit the kittens. And, speaking of birthdays, the kittens are now officially cats, having turned 1 this week. They are full grown--Zoe (Big Stripe) weighs 9 pounds and Kaylee (Little Stripe) weighs 6.

We continue with birthdays in May with Zorg's mom and his aunt, and move on to his nephew and his grandmother (she'll be 102!) in June. I bought a heap of cards at Bartell (including cards in Hebrew and Russian!) and will tackle the presents after we finish with Mother's Day and my cousin Alex's wedding this weekend. Zorg and I celebrate a big wedding anniversary (10) in June. Fortunately, we don't do anniversary gifts. We just go out to a nice restaurant celebrate over martinis, or Manhattans--anything but Zombies.