[
animals
]
2002-03-28
Elbow problems for Apache: We took
Apache,
Smokey, and
Minnie to the vet today. They were not pleased, as you might imagine.
Apache's elbow, it turns out, is discombobulated or something, and the vet wasn't exactly sure how. This explains her limping on her right front paw (one of the reasons we decided to bring her in). It may have been dislocated, but we're not sure.
What we do know is that it's much bigger and lumpier than the elbow on the other side. She didn't show any sign of pain when the vet examined her, or when moving around the exam room though.
Apache's also pregnant, with a litter of at least three likely. She's probably going to give birth within the next few weeks. Anyone want a kitten? :)
Smokey was examined and found to be a healthy female! So now we have three girlie kitties in the master bedroom.
We also got some antibiotics for Minnie's persistent cold. I hope she gets better soon...
[
the net
]
2002-03-28
Weird. I was reading an article about Google and its sponsored links and so on, and it had an example of an anti-abortion one that was allowed, and just for the heck of it I did a search to see what the
Google search for the word "abortion" looked like.
And I find to my amazement that the highest-rated link is for Ardent Communications. What the heck? Why is a communications company the highest-ranking thing for the word "abortion"?
I checked their site real quick and didn't see a damn thing related to abortion, so I'm not sure what's going on. Weird.
[
rants
]
2002-03-27
Amazon is ok again: They sent me an email correcting everything. I'm happy again now.
Mostly. I'll still always have to double and triple-check my receipts from them, just to make sure the total didn't magically change between order confirmation and shipping. Sigh.
[
beauty
music
]
2002-03-27
Cool little movie: Daniel sent me a link to
this spiffy movie (
local mirror) that I call "Anthem for the Atari Generation".
It's got lots of kookie low-res graphics and really neat music all created with simple beeps and so on. Brought back lots of fond memories for me. :)
[
rants
]
2002-03-26
GRRRR!!! Amazon is a bunch of rotten stinking filth: I ordered
a toy for Elena the other day, and it said "free shipping". My order confirmation email showed that the shipping was free.
So today I get an email telling me that they shipped my item. Oh goodie, thinks I.
Hmm, suddenly my free shipping turned into merely a shipping *discount*, and they're charging me $8.67 instead of $5.99.
Those punk-ass scum!
Okay, so I go to Amazon to look for an email address to send a complaint to, to get them to look into this.
And I spend like twenty minutes trying to find it - they hide it well. Jerks. Grr.
[
the net
]
2002-03-26
I don't have the energy to redo the whole post: But I don't want the spiffy links I dug up to die forever. So here's what I can remember and re-dig-up, but not all nice and pretty-like:
Some cool little films of a comic artist drawing while telling various stories.
A blogger replies to a rude fundie who sent him a nasty note about not believing in god
Boxes and Arrows - an online mag about digital architecture and design
A bit with the quote: "the only long-term effect of copy protection is to ensure that those who defeat it are immortalized"
The Multi-Dimensional Human Embryo
Did Gwyneth Paltrow take some bad crack, or what? - women as beautiful as she is have no excuse to look this horrible in public. On a gala night, no less.
George W Bush as a 1980 JCPenney catalog model
furnitureporn.com - hilarious. I particularly like the part of the disclaimer which states: "I understand that by clicking "enter" below I agree to all of the above, even the stuff that contradicts itself."
Pitcairn Island Virtual Shopping Mall - notice how the artisans all have only one of four last names. I like their ultra-simple postal address, too.
Hyperbolic Planes - including instructions for how to crochet one. Neato!
The Social Psychology of Modern Slavery - it's easier to free their bodies than their minds. Slavery's still around, and it still sucks.
Judge bans mom from smoking - that is, if she wants to have visitation with her son. Ahh, ain't family court grand?
Friendly fire deaths traced to dead battery - ain't technology grand? This is one for the RISKS digest, methinks.
I'm still angry.
[
rants
]
2002-03-26
CRAAAAAAAAAP! Shit! I had this huge post with a whole bunch of links and stuff ready to go, but then I went and hit the bookmarklet link from another window, and my post disappeared into the ether.
Yes, that's right, apparently the brilliant folks at Movable Type have decided that it's a crime to have open more than one pending post. GAH!
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I'm going to roll my own. I couldn't do it with a motivation of "gee this would be cool", but *anger*, now that's something that might motivate me.
Sigh.
It was all beautifully formatted, too. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit. I hate technology when it sucks.
[
body
]
2002-03-26
I just finished a walk: And I feel quite tired, oy. I went 3.1 miles in 58 minutes. Not bad for my first walk in a long while.
In theory, I'd like to aim for four miles next time out. We'll see how I feel - this really took a lot out of me. Geez, I must be getting old.
Since I was walking in the margin next to a country road, a fair amount of it involved walking on a slope, which bugged my ankles (I have historically prone-to-sprain ankles).
I'm wondering if any of you know - will walking on sideways slopes eventually feel less bad? In other words, can I build up flexibility and strength in the appropriate bodily bits, or am I doomed and just hurting myself unnecessarily?
Because if it's the latter, then I might as well wear my ankle braces while I walk and just save myself the strain.
Please comment if you know anything about this...
[
design
]
2002-03-26
Here's the tiling pattern, finally: I had to do some geometry last night to figure out the proportions of the pentagons to use for my tiling pattern. Note: do not attempt geometry when you are very tired and it's been at least a decade since you saw the inside of a math classroom.
I made some mistakes at the beginning, but soon got off on the right track, thanks to good old Pythagoras. It turns out that my pentagon has two right angles in it (which are not adjacent), and that four of the sides are the same length. Let's call that length x. So I had to figure out how long the other side was - I call it y. It just so happens that:
Which comes out to 1.30656296x, more or less.
I was pleased that, tired as I was, I got the right answer last night. Yippee! My geometry gland may be old and rusty, but at least it still seems to work.
So today I got around to drawing the thing up in Paint Shop Pro, so you can see what I'm talking about. Essentially, four of the pentagons together make up a hexagon, such that the hexagonal lattice thus created can be rotated ninety degrees to lay exactly over itself.
I know, you're not impressed. But I thought it was cool when I saw it years ago. It hit all my happy symmetry-detection buttons. And now, at last, my quest is complete.
Behold:
(click for a bigger version)
And if you would like to color your own, try this plain vanilla one. I myself am looking forward to playing around with different color schemes.
Perhaps I may actually have the wherewithal to make some molds and create some concrete pavers in this shape. Wouldn't that be nifty. :)
[
random thoughts
]
2002-03-24
I have a Fabric Problem: 197 pounds worth. I went and weighed it, just to see how bad it was.
I need to do some sewing. Bad.
[
design
]
2002-03-24
Flo Control: Some clever person has set up a
cat door which only opens if the cat has nothing in its mouth. They use image recognition to check the cat's profile and stuff. It's very, very cool. Via Daniel via Slashdot.
[
design
]
2002-03-24
Almost got the elusive tessellation of doom: Goodness gracious me, I have been wandering all over the darn place looking for the tessellation I was after, and I still haven't found it. I spent hours and hours poring through various geometrical websites and such, and I *finally* found
this site which has a
picture at the bottom that set off all sorts of "aha!" buttons in my head.
I quickly pulled out a piece of paper and sketched out what I remembered of the tiling pattern I was seeking, and I think I've got it! So now I just have to draw it up carefully and show you what the heck I'm talking about.
This has certainly been an interesting exercise. It was fascinating feeling the connections in my brain brighten as I'd occasionally see glimpses of tiling patterns that were sorta-kinda close to the one I'm seeking, at least in one or two respects. Over time, this helped me hone my recollections to the point where I was able to recreate what I had in mind.
It's rather extraordinary, when you think about it - that something I saw only briefly a couple years ago would be non-recollectable by itself, but able to be kindled back into existence by near misses.
Well, okay, *you* may not find it that fascinating, but to me, as someone who obsesses over thought and cognition and consciousness and how our minds work on a daily basis, I thought it was pretty cool. And hey, I recognize that this is probably losing a lot in the telling - it's interesting to *experience* it, but probably hard for other people to imagine what it felt like to me as I got closer and closer to the goal.
Anyway, here's a list of some of the cool sites I found as I wandered:
- Tilings and Geometric Ornament - Escherization, Islamic star patterns, parquet deformations, symmetrohedra, and voronoi diagrams. I'm going to have to dig deeper here later - there's some really cool stuff!
- Gecko Stone - molds for creating gecko-shaped pavers. These are extraordinary! There are other shapes, too, of which this one is my favorite. If I were rich, I'd be creating a driveway out of these. Add these to my Dream House list. The architect who created these has some other really cool designs on that site, along with an interview that includes this lovely tidbit:
Q. After you've revolutionized architecture, what will you do next?
A. Write books, play music, and make movies.
Pretty ambitious, eh! :)
- Chaotile - a set of two pentagons that covers the plane in fascinating ways. I don't agree that simple *polygons* should be patentable, but that's a rant for another time.
- A beautifully tiled bathroom - using pentagons similar to one of those used in Chaotiles.
- The Geometry Junkyard page on Tiling - lots of really cool resources here, too many to list.
- Wrinkle - a reaction-diffusion Java applet that I am going to play with right after I post this entry :)
- Totally Tessellated: Mosaics/Tilings - great examples and links here. This page on pentagonal tilings was one of the ones that hit my "aha!" button pretty hard, too.
- The Wonder of Symmetry - a bit on the philosophy of symmetry, as it were, specifically mentioning Islamic contributions thereto. Other pages here I want to look at as well. I like this author's My Mission My Dreams page...
- Escher Dyson Sphere - a ringworld-related idea based on a drawing of Escher's that I hadn't previous seen (or remembered, I suppose).
- Delta Blocks - cool design for 3-d buildng blocks based on octahedra and tetrahedra. I'd buy these if I could - I wonder if the author is ever going to find a manufacturer? I suppose I could email him and ask...
- Investigating Patters: Symmetry and Tessellations - tons of great links and activities (for kids & others).
- Mandala - a beautiful ray-traced rendering of a stained-glass window with a 5-way symmetry.
Damn, I could get lost for *years* in all the links to cool pages I ran across. It's kind of cool that there's so *much* good material out there on these topics. I only scratched the surface...
[
beauty
design
]
2002-03-23
I may never leave the house again: Oh my. While trying to find a particular tessellation I remember seeing on the web a couple years ago (still looking, btw), I stumbled across the java-powered
Kali tool, which lets you explore various plane symmetries. It's amazing - you just click a few times and create beguiling symmetrical patterns.
And of course, the site it's on, the JAVA Gallery of Interactive On-Line Geometry, has lots of other fun tools to explore that I haven't even touched yet. Wow!
[
beauty
]
2002-03-23
Regular Easter eggs not exciting enough for you? Then try your hand at
making Ukrainian Easter eggs (pysanky).
These things are gorgeous - even the beginner designs look extraordinary compared to what you can create with a Paas kit. Wow.
I'll add this to my personal list of Cool Artistic Things I Want To Do Before I Die.
If you, like me, think this is cool but don't have the time to get into it this year, then you (& your kids) can try out the site creator's pysanky coloring book. I think I'll print out some of these designs and have at 'em with my new crayons...
[
random thoughts
]
2002-03-23
Going to a political thingie tomorrow: That is, the
Rolling Thunder Tour, which kicks off in Austin. Michael Moore is going to be speaking, along with Molly Ivins and others. Should be interesting, I hope. I'll post a report here after I go...
[
consume
]
2002-03-23
I found 'em! Aha!
these are what I'm talking about! "Color Mix-Up" is what they call 'em. Now, don't anybody bid on these, or I'll get cranky. :)
[
consume
design
]
2002-03-23
Roll your own box o crayons: Whoa, cool! You can order a
customized box of 64 crayons from
Crayola.com's store. Okay, so it's $8.99, but it's a cool concept.
Imagine - you could have sixteen sky blues and blacks and never run out!
[Later]...
Dang, I see you can only put four different colors in the box. How bogus!
But I did also find this Top 50 Favorite Crayons Commemorative Edition Pack Thingie, which looks pretty cool, though it's pricey. Hmm.
I'm looking for those variegated color crayons I saw a year or two ago, but they don't seem to be there. Guess I'll have to dig deeper. If anyone knows what I'm talking about or where to find them, please let me know. (The variegated ones had tiny little specks of all sorts of colors blended into one crayon, and they made the neatest looking shades...)
[
design
]
2002-03-22
Great Leader Nielsen utters an abomination! To my horror, he has stated the following heresy
here:
Truly, there is not much difference between Coke and Pepsi soft drinks
Of course, all dutiful followers of
Great Leader Nielsen know, as I do, that while the Great Leader is certainly an expert on usability and interface design, he is considered as fallible as the rest of us on other matters. This does not diminish his expertise in his Areas of Cluefulness, mind you.
I still shudder, though, that the Great Leader was misguided enough to proclaim that the Elixir of Life itself was comparable to ... that *other* nasty beverage.
Note to self: put this
"What Would Jakob Do?" mousepad on my birthday list.
[
my site
weblogs
]
2002-03-21
Welcome to MovableType... None of the Above has been migrated to
Movabletype as of today;
Horizon has been retired.
[
typography
]
2002-03-21
I love type: In fact, I think I'll start a new category for it, starting with this entry. As someone who someday strongly desires to create fronts, I was happily struck by this bit that I ran across
at a site about letterforms today:
Do we need more typefaces?
Not really. Most of us can manage perfectly well with what we've got. Hundred years ago, however, somebody could have asked this question and got the same answer. Back then, the world already had Caslon and Garamond, Baskerville and Bodoni. How many more masterpieces were called for?
I'm grateful that type designers kept working. In a century, they have created loveliness the world would be poorer without. And the customers, bless them, still want more. Different flavors, a variety of emphasis, wood types, hobgoblins; everything seemes accepted with delight.
Somebody has to make these people happy.
Indeed.
[
weblogs
]
2002-03-21
Nother webloggish-thing: John Scalzi's
Whatever comes out a couple/few times a week, so I suppose it falls into the broad definition of "weblog". Hey, it's called "Whatever", so I can put it into whatever category I want, right?
I wandered there from a discussion at metafilter about a controversial Ted Rall political cartoon (he made fun of money and attention-grubbing WTC widows). Scalzi, who's a friend of his, wrote a defense of Rall, which I thought made a lot of sense, and which I agreed with quite a bit.
I read (and liked) some more of Scalzi's stuff, including his hints and tips for sending him hate mail (and an update to that advice). It seems his defense of Ted Rall pissed off quite a few people, heh.
He's also got a long piece with some utterly useless writing advice (his words - his title, in fact!) that I haven't gotten around to reading yet, but it looks interesting.
So anyway, seems like a good source of more good writing. I'll add him to the left column when I get around to it.
[
random thoughts
]
2002-03-19
Head down, concentrating. I've been working on some creative projects rather intensely lately, to the exclusion of various other stuff (like making entries here).
Unfortunately, my computer has been acting up today, which is royally pissing me off. Right now I'm defragging one of my hard drives, and I hope this helps to fix the problem.
Anyway, I should have some nifty stuff to show for my work soon, but I don't want to say too much about it til I'm done. :) Worry not - it's not a goofy manifesto or anything, *trust* me.
Heh.
[
body
mammalog
]
2002-03-15
Eurgh. I don't feel so good. I caught an icky cold of some sort on top of the one I was almost done recovering from. It hit me rather powerfully today.
So I'm tired and cranky and my head feels pressurized with green mucousy goo and my tummy doesn't feel so hot either.
And this certainly didn't help my temper when dealing with Elena yesterday and today - she's been especially naughty, wandering away from me in public places, breaking stuff even as I tell her not to, refusing to pick up her toys. So I've been kind of a Hard-Ass Mommy lately.
I'm starting to do this more - stuff like taking her toys away if she refuses to keep them tidy when I ask her to. Like today, she dumped out the pachinko balls on the floor and refused to help me pick them up, so I confiscated them. I'm not sure when I'll let her play with the pachinko machine again. Whenever she shows some kind of sign of being ready to follow my instructions of not dumping the balls out. Like when she's nineteen or something.
Ok, now I'm Cynical Mommy. And rather disappointed in myself for not being able to get her to behave. Argh. I should probably research discipline techniques, eh?
Anyway, I've made at least one resolution about how things will be different from now on - I'm going to get a harness and put it on her when we're in public, and keep her on a leash. Better to be humiliated than hurt or lost or kidnapped. Actually, she won't be humiliated or even embarrassed, I don't think - she's very much into this whole "I'm a little doggie" pretending thing these days, so it'll all play into that, I suppose.
And we'll have the opportunity to take some neat pictures to show her friends when she grows up. Heh heh. (note to self: add this to the Dirty Mommy Tricks file...)
[
the net
]
2002-03-14
Automatic news digestion:
Provided by the
Columbia Newsblaster. This is highly cool! via
Girlhacker
[
design
]
2002-03-14
Flash-powered face editor:
Like a police-sketch kind of thing.
Try making your own face - it's harder than you might think! Via Metafilter.
[
humor
]
2002-03-14
Text-based pong:
Go play. via Metafilter. I laughed out loud. :)
[
mental
]
2002-03-13
It's my one-year psychosis anniversary: A year ago today, I went quite literally insane. I haven't written the full story about it yet, because I have been waiting for things to sort of come into perspective. And, to be honest, it took me quite awhile to fully (?) recover.
Also, I'll be the first to admit that I'm lazy as hell.
Anyway, I plan to write about it soon. Today was rather busy, and the next couple of days will be as well.
I've learned a lot, grown a lot, changed a lot. It seems, anyway. It's certainly been an adventure. I'm still trying to understand it all. Part of what makes it so earth-shattering is that for the rest of my life I have to be wary of relapse.
More later. This is starting to bum me out, and the story certainly isn't all sad...
[
rants
]
2002-03-13
How annoying and stupid: I just want to state, for the record, that I think that the whole repeated mention in various blogs of the phrase "What is real?" followed by a (non-toll-free) phone number, is really, really stupid.
Even if I were magnificently interested in the 20x2 talk at the South by Southwest conference (which I'm not going to this year), it would still bug the shit out of me.
Is anyone bothering to call this number? Let me guess, is there some clever message left there that people are supposed to listen to? Somehow I doubt that it has anything cogent to say about the question of what's real.
Perhaps they should have said instead: "What is real annoying? Spend money and call this number but we're not going to give you any clues about what it's about, we're just going to tease you because we're so cool that we don't have to deign to do anything as banal as explain ourselves: (number)".
It's... just insulting to the intellect that they're going about advertising this event this way. Geez, why do I have such a bug up my ass about this?
[I managed somehow to resist the urge to list my phone number after that question. :)]
[
later
]
2002-03-13
Note to self: read when brain not tired:
I came across
David Chess's senior thesis in philosophy (I think via Plurp), and I want to read it but I'm too tired right now. Hence the categorization on this one.
[
design
]
2002-03-13
Tappity-tap:
Inspired by Ian Whalley's
recent tale of his painstaking cleaning of his Omnikey keyboard, I sent him a little blurb about how much I enjoy mine as well.
I also did a Google search and found this cool review of a more recent model of Omnikey.
I knew that this was a different kind of keyboard as soon as I opened the box. For one thing, the keyboard is heavy -- it weighs about five pounds. The top of the keyboard is made of extremely sturdy plastic, and the bottom is made of rigid metal. This is an industrial strength piece of hardware. The other thing that sets this keyboard apart is that it comes with a tool for removing the keys, something you don't see every day. With the software that comes with it, you can reprogram the functionality of any of the keys, and using the tool, you can rearrange the keycaps to reflect the new layout.
Whoa. Can you imagine, not being limited to Qwerty or Dvorak layouts? You could make your own! And you could also royally vex anyone who dared come to your machine and start typing away on it. Heh heh heh...
When I get some money, it might behoove me to chase down one of these, since my current Omnikey 101, given to me by my dad (Hi, Dad! And thanks again!) a couple years ago, might someday croak or something. Plus I just love the idea of having a five-pound keyboard.
[
good
]
2002-03-13
A brilliant idea:
Via Rebecca Blood's log, I came to
this article about a BBC show called Back to the Floor, where CEOs spend a week at the bottom rung of their organizations to learn what's *really* going on, and (hopefully) make changes to fix the problems.
Almost without exception, CEOs learn a lesson in communication. "We find people at the heart of every organization who know exactly what's right and what's wrong with it," says Thirkell. "But between them and the bosses is a layer of people -- those whose careers depend on sanitizing that information. Bosses are always surprised at how much knowledge exists further down the ladder."
Exactly! Wow, how totally cool. I had actually been thinking about something like this myself, in more of a what-if fantasyland kind of way. That is, I was trying to imagine how to create an organization that didn't suck the way most (all?) corporations do.
What I thought of was some kind of system whereby *everyone*, especially those at the top, have to take turns doing the shit jobs. As in, literally cleaning toilets. (perhaps I was inspired by watching the movie Gandhi as a child - I seem to recall something about this in his ideas of how he ran his organization)
The point being that it's only fair. And it would hopefully keep people from getting too darn uppity. Well, in my fantasies it works that way. :) Who knows if I'll ever have a chance to put it into practice. You know, when I'm a gozillionaire and media mogul and so on.
Anyway... this show sounds amazingly cool. Apparently it will show on American PBS stations starting this spring. I went to the website for the show and found to my glee that they have transcripts online of all the previous shows (like this one). Coolness! I'll have to go and dig in at some point...
[
random thoughts
]
2002-03-13
Well, I feel like a dork:
After making the previous entry, I went to catch up reading at Plurp, and realized that Steve White made an entry about the same entry of Ian Whalley's that I did, and even quoted the same paragraph. Before me, that is. So I look like some kind of dingus copycat or something. Or do I?
[
random thoughts
]
2002-03-13
Good point, Ian:
The good Mr. Whalley (or should I use the British style and refer to him as "Mr Whalley", with no period?), has come up with a
really interesting point:
The purpose of the 'shadow government', according to various mindless government spokespeople (including, but not limited to, Dubya) is to ensure that essential federal government services continue in the event of the aforementioned large and nasty event. So, my entirely obvious question is, if it only takes around 100 senior government workers to provide the essential services of the federal government, what the blue bleeding heck are all those tens of thousands of government wallas in DC doing?
There's more - go read.
[
the net
]
2002-03-12
Assorted stuff:
Time for a list of thing I've found lately around the web...
[
mammalog
]
2002-03-12
Hot tub o doom:
We got the hot tub heated up several days ago, and we've been enjoying it mightily. However, there was an unfortunate event the first day Elena came in to play with us...
Elena enjoyed splashing in the water, and I was happy to see that when she stood up, her head was fully above water in the middle (deepest) section of the hot tub. Everything was fine, we had a nice time, etc.
I was hanging out in the loungey area across from Elena, who was sitting on the edge with her legs on the top step. Suddenly, she disappeared as she fell backwards. She must have wobbled, tried to regain her balance by flailing her arms reflexively, then slipped and ended up leaning so far back that she couldn't recover.
At any rate, it was horrifying - she was screaming, I got out of the tub as fast as I could, and picked her up. Her right side was covered in dirt, including her face.
I took her inside and washed off the dirt and inspected her for injuries. She had a scrape on her shoulder, and her wrist hurt. She also had a bruise on her right hip that I didn't notice until later. Poor kid. :(
She was mightily miserable, but she managed to escape serious injury, for which I was grateful. I felt so stupid for not realizing how dangerous it was for her to be sitting at the edge. Damn. Bad mommy!
The fall was about three feet down onto dirt and rocks. I feel very lucky that she didn't break a bone or bonk her head - she could have gotten a bad concussion, I imagine.
Anyway, she's doing much better now, and we went into the tub again just the other day. Of course, now there's a new rule - absolutely NO sitting on the edge! And I held my arm behind her whenever she stood on the top step.
Despite the fall, she absolute adores going in there. It's a lot of fun, I must admit. :) Tonight, if we're lucky, the stars will be out and we can gaze a bit when we go out there.
[
animals
]
2002-03-12
$kitties++: We finally got
Smokey! He/she (we haven't done a gender check yet, as doing so would likely result in being clawed viciously) is the sibling of Mini-me. Speaking of which, Mini turned out to be female when we took her to the vet, so I'm thinking of calling her Minnie Mae from now on. What do you think?
Anyway, it took us many tries to get that darned Smokey. Probably upwards of ten tries, all told.
Finally we rigged up a big empty wire-mesh dog crate with a trap door, activated by a string attached via a slipknot. We strung the string all the way into the house, and hooked up another camera to watch the crate. The cat food was placed inside the cage, to draw kitties inside.
The first time I pulled the thing, I held onto the string too long and Smokey squeaked out. So we tried another way of tying the string so that particular issue would not apply.
On the next attempt, the gate came down on Smokey's head, and he/she got out yet again.
Days later (this has gone on for the better part of two weeks, the whole attempt at capture thing), we spied Tabitha and Smokey in the cage at the same time. I said "what the hell" and tried again, and we got 'em!
They freaked, but we managed to get Smokey into a small plastic animal crate, and left the door open for Tabitha to take off at her (?) leisure.
We let Smokey go in the bedroom, where Minnie has been staying for awhile. He/she immediately headed for the closet, and has stayed hidden whenever we're in there. Smokey's extremely skittish, and I doubt this will change. The key is to hang on to him/her until we can get shots and spaying/neutering done.
Later on, when we have more fundage, we'll work on getting the other kitties. We have several new ones, some of whom need names.
Here are some pix of various ones that we caught on the barn cam in the past couple of days:
Feel free to suggest names for the nameless ones in a comment (and let me know which one you're suggesting a name for!).
[
good
]
2002-03-07
The tub! The tub!
The hot tub, that is. It works! It was a long saga, which I won't go into the details of, but suffice it to say that the pump had to be replaced, the tub scrubbed and disinfected, and then we had to fix a mysterious leak between the fittings.
But now it's full of water, and we have the heater running. We're going to check on it in a little while. This is sooooo cool!
I can hardly wait to lay down in there in the lounge-shaped area, looking at the stars with my binoculars. Sweet!
Elena is just going to *love* this, too. (And yes, of course I wouldn't dream of letting her out of my sight (and immediate grasp) around the thing, to be sure).
[
the net
]
2002-03-07
Various & sundry:
Enjoy:
[
random thoughts
]
2002-03-03
Blood and death:
We've had too much of it lately. Of the feline variety, that is. I haven't been keeping pace with the latest news on this front, but now I'm getting everything up to date.
To put it bluntly, three more cats have died in the past week and a half. I was waiting to write about it until I had some pictures uploaded and ready, but I've put it off long enough. I decided to write about it, lest any more perish before I finally make my report.
A week ago last Thursday, we went out to deliver a chair to a friend of David's, and we saw a Siamese kitty at the side of the road. "That looks like Sammy", I said. "Oh shit, that *is* Sammy!"
We got out, and found to our dismay that it was our little friend, my favorite kitty. :( He had been dead for hours. He must have gotten hit by a car.
I was quite upset - it was so sudden, and seemed so unfair. We have no idea what he was doing out by the road. I remember how he slept with us that last night of his life, and how I had petted him in the morning as he licked my chin. And now he's gone. Argh.
We delivered the chair, and just to make a shitty day shittier, I managed to kick a fire-ant mound and get fire ants inside my sandal. They bit me mercilessly, and it hurt like hell.
Later that day, we dug a hole and buried Sammy. I'm going to make him a marker stone. The poor little guy was only nine months old. His brother, Junior, was pitifully waiting on the bridge outside the back door for days, looking for him. I think it's finally sunk in that Sammy's not coming back.
A couple days later, Trillian finally succumbed to old age. We had expected this, it had been a long time coming, and frankly I'm glad she's not suffering any more. She was whining a whole lot in that last week, and I was just about to suggest to David that having her put to sleep might be called for, but then she was gone.
Then, we have yesterday...
I was taking a nap, when David came in all panicked because Latte had attacked the cat known as B.C., and he was severely injured.
A little background on Latte: he was hit by a car some time back, and has been more than a little looney in the head since the accident. He has a tendency to be overly aggressive in inappropriate situations, and has been suspected of killing a cat and a possum previously. He does submit to human authority, though.
Unfortunately, no human authority was around when B.C. was attacked in the back yard. David loaded him up in a crate and we went as fast as we could to the emergency vet clinic. By the time we got there, he had died.
Today, David buried him. We are sick of this crap already. David is going to either find a new home for Latte or have him put down. It's unfortunate, but really the dog is beyond reform. David has already given him lots of chances, and this is just too much.
I'm going to miss B.C. - he was a familiar figure who would follow and play with the younger cats when we went outside. He was only about two years old or so.
So now we've got Junior in the house, and a new recent captive: Mini-me. We kidnapped him about four or five days ago, and he's living in the master bedroom and bathroom. He's about three months old. At first he was standoffish, but now he purrs mightily when petted and sleeps on the bed. He's still sort of skittish.
We want to nab his brother, Smokey, but our attempt the other night was thwarted. Smokey is *extremely* shy. When we originally tried to get him last week, David had him in a net but he squiggled free. Ah, well. We'll keep trying.
The other non-feral cat around is Silver, who has found to her glee that she can hang around the house and not be hassled too terribly much, since Junior no longer has his brother Sammy around to gang up on her.
Junior tries to bug her now and then, but we yell at him to knock it off. Plus he's spending quite a lot of time in the master bedroom, keeping Mini-me company.
Okay, that's way more than you wanted to know about the cats around here, probably. Ah, well. I'm going to try to scrounge up some better pictures, but for now you can look at this little page of critter pix that I threw together a little while back. It's rough, but you may enjoy it.
[
body
books
food
good
mammalog
]
2002-03-01
The McDonald's habitrail workout:
is my new exercise plan. Well, part of it, anyway. :) We went and picked up Elena today, then went in search of a McDonald's with an indoor playground to go have lunch at, since the weather is all misty and gray.
We found one, where we hadn't been before. It was quite fabulous! The playground was smallish but well-laid-out, and made by Little Tikes (one of my favorite companies, as it so happens...). They also had a kiosk with Nintendo Game Cube games on four sides, at child-height. I tried to play the Pikmin game, but couldn't figure out how to make the little dude jump. (Later I saw a little girl guiding the dude up a ramp, so I suppose jumping wasn't required at that point after all).
I went up into the tube system twice with Elena, and it wore me out both times. Heck, I should go there with her some other time and just go through as many times as I can for half an hour or an hour, to get in shape.
When we arrived there, we were the only people in the playground room, but we were soon beset on all sides by crowds of homeschooling kids who had met there. It quickly became a zoo full of shrieking, running children. Egads!
Afterwards, we went by the bookstore where I got Fast Food Nation, something I've been meaning to read. I know that it has something in it about McDonald's playgrounds, and I had been wanting to read it ever since I heard the author talk about the book on NPR last year.
The lady at Barnes & Noble told me that the author had been down at Book People (the big independent bookstore downtown) just last week, and apparently it was really great. Crap! Just missed it. Ah, well.
Anyway, I want to read the book for more than just the stuff about playgrounds, of course. But I'm thinking of getting serious about my research for The Ultimate Playground Project... I may have to pay a trip to the local library sometime soon.
I also got a Barbie book for Elena that she picked out herself. It features a pink plastic carrying handle, and a matching pink plastic latch to keep the book closed. It's actually pretty cool - it features Barbie in various career situations: doctor, teacher, astronaut, artist, business executive, clothing designer, fire fighter, ballerina, veterinarian. The best part is making up my own words to go with the pictures :) "See Elena, there's Barbie at her desk reading a note from one of her underlings asking her for a raise. 'Fat chance!', says Barbie."
I read it to her once at the store, once in the car, and when she hassled me repeatedly to read it to her again in the car, I said no. She whined and whined about the fact that she couldn't read it herself and I told her I'd teach her to read. So we'll see if she's really interested.
I downloaded some cool fonts the other day, including some with dashed lines to serve as examples for practicing writing. I'll run off a few sheets of her name, the alphabet, and so on to see if it grabs her interest. If so, nifty, if not, no big deal, I'll wait and try again sometime later. She'll catch on at some point, when the spirit strikes her.
[
mental
random thoughts
]
2002-03-01
Insert something profound here. That is, something profound yet subtly witty, and blessedly brief.
It's a new day, and a new month, and so I'm trying out a new system. Also, I happened to wake up at seven in the morning. Go figure.
I actually put on my _robe_, of all things. My actual Lands' End *robe*. The one that's so cushy that it's normally just way too much for Texas, basically. But this morning it's juuuuuuuuust right. :)
(A robe, incidentally, given to me by my wonderful and loving mother, in a style which she had me select, right down to the monogrammed "B" emblazoned thereon)
Heh. Okay, by now, you know *something* is up. Not only am I actually writing an entry, but I'm using phrases like "emblazoned thereon".
Yes, that's right, I'm feeling a surge, an upwelling of writerly energy. Of creative energy, actually, on several fronts. It's tricky, though. I don't get many of these surges lately...
Back up, fill in.
Okay, I'm a manic depressive. Bipolar. What-have-you. This means many things, some of which are interesting, many of which are downright *not*.
For about the past year (fifty weeks, to split hairs), I've been on various medications for a mental illness that was keeping me from living a so-called "normal" life.
These medications have some nifty effects (side and otherwise). For one thing, little niggling annoyances that would have previously wound me up into paroxysms of anxiety just plain don't anymore. I'm able to just chill and go "heh" and relax and deal with the situation. This is an incredible relief!
That's an exaggeration, of course. I re-read what I just wrote and it sounds so extreme, but it's really not.
There's a general dampening effect of what would otherwise tend to be some rather wild oscillations in mood and so forth. Many times this is good, but at other times, well...
Let's just put it this way - my libido is not at its peak, and it feels like just a rumor of whatever it once was. But that's not really the focus of today's discussion.
No, today I wanted to babble on about the fact that my creative faculties have been dampened a bit too much, and that it saddens me, and makes my life kind of damp and gray and like tofu, when I really want it to be more like free-range beef.
Or even buffalo.
:)
Is that dorky enough for ya? Damn, it's a good thing I don't take myself too seriously.
The point being, I have all these really fascinating and amazing ideas and further, I have fascinating and amazing ideas about how I want to put them forth. And I just haven't been able to get it all together yet, because of the way I am plus the way the medication makes me. And stuff.
So I've been trying to think of ways to get around my mental roadblocks. Trust me, I've been working on this damn problem my whole life. And I'm so used to failing. Argh!
In some ways I'm worried that I've gotten myself so used to failing at this that I sabotage my ability to win - that I expect failure, so I get failure, basically.
I feel as though I have to try something radically different, trap myself in a way that I can't weasel my way out of later, in order to get past some of these stupid avoidance behaviors that I have.
Okay, I'm getting off track. Sorry.
The point, and I do have one, is this:
There was a time, back in my past, when I won. I not only won...
I. Kicked. Ass.
I totally blew everyone away with my brilliance. It was all my idea, all original. It was the high point of my creativity, and even still I knew I could do better.
This happened in my senior year of high school. The story is that of a paper for a very special class. It's a story I'll tell later (sorry, go ahead and throw tomatoes at me for that).
The point is: I *know* I have it in me. I _know_ I can do it again. I deserve nothing less.
Enough sitting on the sidelines, making plans. I want to play. I want to kick ass again.
Yeah, this sounds overly grandiose. Thbbbt, and all that.
But to me, it's my _life_.
It's irretrievably bound up with my sense of worth. There's a lot more to this story, it's all tangled up together. Essentially I've fallen off the track of a smart, brilliant person who was going places, and ended up in some weird eddy current where I can't even get a fast-food job, or get anything worthwhile done most days.
I know I can do better than this. I owe it to myself.
So...
I've got a lot of work to do. I have some ideas for the content management system I want to create, and I have to work on the spec.
It's almost time for me to go take my shower.
It's a lovely, misty gray morning here in Leander, Texas. And I think it's going to be a good day. :)
