The Mysterious Traveler Sets Out

The Mysterious Traveler catches up

2012-01-13T17:09:00.000-08:00

Busy times.

After a tough 2011 for my business (my major client cut back its social media program, and I had extensive time commitments as the president of a nonprofit board), 2012 is already looking much better.

I'm drafting a specialized website for a state agency, writing an ebook for an agency client (which, as you might imagine, pays better than writing for a government entity), and rewriting a website for a high-level consultant in the product development field.

I'm thinking this is the time to launch to my "social media audit" product for mid-size organizations. I sold a few audits last year, and thing I have a good sense for customer expectations and pricing. However, I'd like to develop some add-on services, including social media coaching and a website-redesign process, for people who want move ahead on social media after the audit.

There is also a possibility for a longterm project working on a team studying social media in a healthcare setting. There are so many feeble attempts by start-ups to make money by "gamifying" healthy activities via social media that I'm a little wary. But this is a respected research organization, and if they can make it work it would be a model — and I'd sure like to be involved in that.

Outside of work, I'm finding myself caught up in a lot more volunteer activities than I had anticipated. I like the people, and I'm fascinated with the fundraising and social media aspects of nonprofit work. Tom and I are involved with quite a few of the same groups, which is great fun.

On the home front, I'm wondering how many wet, cold, bleak Seattle winters I can stand. A friend I expressed this to asked me "If global warming happened, and Seattle were 20 degrees warmer, would you want to move?"

"Absolutely NOT," I said. So, there you have it. Love our house, our friends, my work, the neighborhood — really hate the wet, cold winters. Really.

And I know when we move to Santa Cruz, I'll say "Why didn't we do this earlier?"

The cats could go outdoors more, and I wouldn't have to deal with Mabel trying to dominate the household — including us. The vet put her on Prozac, but she made it very clear that she'd rather starve than eat anything that might have Prozac compounded with tuna oil in it. And as far as giving Mabel pills – if you've met Mabel, you wouldn't ask. We already have Feliway diffusers all over the house...who knows if they work?

Cats

2011-11-21T23:53:00.000-08:00

I've lived with a lot of cats over the years, but I don't think I've ever known a cat as demanding as Mabel. Perhaps that's because most cats demand to go out, or to eat. What Mabel demands is to sit on you. And if you don't sit down and let her sit on you, she gets rather snippy. Literally snippy. We've learned to read the signals about a second before she swats or snaps and tell her "no." We also move out of reach.

Tonight she became increasingly huffy as I sat through an hour-long video with Zoe, her arch rival, on my lap. When the video was over and I attempted to leave the room, Mabel, who'd been sitting, glaring, in the cat tree for the duration of the show, somehow herded me back to the couch and then sat on me.

I find myself wondering: What is she thinking when she does this?

This is an odd fall

2011-11-16T23:35:00.000-08:00

Almost Thanksgiving, but all the leaves are still on the wisteria, the climbing hydrangea, and one of my odd vines — although most of the maple trees are bare.

There are still blueberries ripening on the blueberry bushes, and a few confused plants are flowering because they thought it was spring already.

Tuesday was the first true cold.

Even if the plants were confused, I was ready for it. I went out to a meeting wearing a long wool coat with a furry collar that buttons up around my ears. And gloves. And insulated boots. And it was STILL too cold.

Every day, I check the temperatures in Santa Cruz — where it's inevitably 20 degrees warmer.

Sigh.

Florida

2011-10-25T19:40:00.000-07:00

I'm in Naples again, visiting my mother. She's lived here for 22 years. At first she was a snowbird, spending summers on Cape Cod or in the Seattle area, but three years ago she moved here full time.

Her condo is much like every place else my parents have lived -- everything is painted off-white, is sparely furnished, uncluttered, and very, very clean. (We're talking off-white tile floors and off-white wall-to-wall carpeting.) Needless to say, there are no pets, just two sofa pillows in the shape of tabby cats.

My mom's hobby is sewing, so she has a serger and sewing machine in the guest room. The living room has a flat-screen TV and a DVD player; the laundry room has a desk with her Powerbook. I've just downloaded the Steve Jobs biography on my iPad, and now she's 2/3 of the way through it. She keeps muttering "He didn't like to take showers!"

I'm reading The Falstaff Vampire Files (by Lynne Murray) on my iPhone. Not elegantly written, but it has a clever plot, a great Bay Area setting, and is highly entertaining. I think you'd call it a vampire cozy. Perfect vacation reading.

Bad theater, broken dishwashers, and the mysterious cat

2011-09-29T14:33:00.000-07:00

Context: Kind of stunned after wrapping up my year as a board president and getting back into my writing and digital content business full time.

Last night Tom and I went to see Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart at ACT Theater. I was not eager.

Because I have so many last minute meetings and weird client emergencies, I inevitably end up moving our tickets from date to date. And, even when it all gets settled, I usually wish we could just have a quiet evening at home. However, once I get to the theater, I enjoy the show and am glad we've gone.

Last night may change all that!

Have you ever been to a play where the ushers give you a warning as you enter? I hadn't, but last night they were warning everyone that the play was 2-1/2 hours long.

What they didn't tell us was that it was 2-1/2 hours of two nearly indistinguishably shrill actresses, both in red wigs and elaborate period gowns, ranting and raving. If there had been any scenery to speak of, they'd have chewed on it. The high point of the first act was the scene where they finally meet and are shrieking (Mary Stuart) and snarling (Elizabeth I) at each other.

During most of the scenes, male actors dressed in modern business suits stood by, looking about as involved as accountants, until called upon to speak their lines. Some of the Men in Gray turned out to be double agents.

When the intermission arrived, audience members stood up, as if stunned, and drifted out into the lobby. Tom and I just sat there. It slowly dawned on us that we both wanted to be somewhere else, and we simply fled.

On our way through the Convention Center to the parking garage, we came across a wonderful exhibition of prints, many of them by a local artist of Finnish heritage, Mirka Hokkanen. When we got home we looked her up on the internet and discovered that our favorite of her prints from the show, Peeping Tom Cat, was available for all of $20 on Etsy. (You can also see it on her homepage, though the low-resolution version there hardly does it justice.) We bought it, and I'm sure will enjoy it long after all memory of the Mary Stuart performance has faded.

* * *

I've been putting off various repair work because of lack of time to deal with finding, scheduling, and supervising things, but am now starting to come to grips with things like the flooding storage locker, the mysteriously rattling dishwasher, and the front steps badly in need of weather-proofing.

My favorite professional movers (Adam's Moving) are coming next week to help me move things from the flooding storage unit to a non-flooding one in the same building. I discovered that Sears, always so eager to get me to renew my dishwasher warranty, stopped being eager after the dishwasher turned 10. So it's now out of warranty. A diagnostic visit from Sears is exorbitant enough that I contemplated replacing the dishwasher — unfortunately, every mid-range dishwasher recommended by Consumer Reports gets low ratings from actual human beings, with nearly every reviewer saying that the new KitchenAid/Bosch/Kenmore dishwashers with all the nifty features and energy-saving ratings aren't nearly as sturdy or dependable as the old ones.

Since the problem with my old Kenmore Elite is a minor mechanical issue with the whirling spray arm, I've decided to get it repaired by a local repair person (not, shudder, Sears).

The ideal solution, apparently, would be to find a 10-year-old KitchenAid/Bosch/Kenmore dishwasher that has never been used and buy that.

* * *

And now, for the mysterious cat, Mr. Garibaldi. He turned up four years ago as a pathetic stray tomcat, absolutely terrified of people. He'd sit on the back porch with his nose against the glass door and stare. But when I opened the door to put out a dish of food, he'd flee and hide under the porch. Gradually, he got used to me and would allow me to pet him and sit next to him while he ate.

My neighbor the cat rescuer, Joe, was also dealing with Mr. Garibaldi (he calls him "Sidewinder") and it was Joe who succeeded in capturing Garibaldi and getting him neutered. Garibaldi then moved into Joe's house, and would come by to visit me only on weekends when Joe was traveling. Occasionally I swing by Joe's yard and Garibaldi comes over to be petted.

Garibaldi often vanishes during the summer, and returns in the fall. I was concerned because Mabel and Zoe ran him off one night last spring and he hadn't come by since. Every night when I go into the kitchen to turn off the lights and lock up, I look for him. And last night, there he was.

I got out the food, put it in a dish, took it out to him, and sat on the steps while he ate. Just like old times. He looks great — fluffy and healthy. You'd never guess how battered he'd been four years ago. He ate most of the food, and then trotted down the steps and sat on the patio, staring up at me.

I'm fascinated by Garibaldi. I interpret it as a good omen when he shows up, but it probably just means he's hungry.

Work weekend

2011-09-05T13:29:00.000-07:00

I love the ironic name of Labor Day Weekend. I know it's supposed to be a vacation, but I use it to complete the final work projects of the summer.

I looked at the list of what didn't get done this summer and decided that "detail the car" and "polish the kitchen floor" were the two things that would work best in hot weather. We started with a basic vacuum and wash at Brown Bear, then I came home and got out the detailing sprays and crevice vacuum attachments and spent 45 minutes fine-tuning everything. That's it for a year...unless my mother decides to visit, in which case I'll rush the Fit off to a professional detailer plus figure out what to do about the spot of sky-blue paint on the door where a truck owner parked next to me at Home Depot opened his two-ton door into mine -- and then made a fast getaway.

Polishing the kitchen floor is somewhat more complicated than it sounds. The floor is marmoleum, and it requires three to five coats of a thin glaze, which is applied with a damp towel, one layer at a time, with plenty of time in between for drying.

It's a small floor, I don't mind crawling around on my hands and knees, but it's amazing how difficult it is to keep people and cats OFF the floor for two or more hours. My plan is to put most of the cats outside, and see if I can get Sheba to use the front door rather than the kitchen door. Finding cat hair in a layer of "set" glaze is disgusting.

None of this means that Labor Day Weekend is all work and no play. We went to a games party Friday night, hung out at the Ballard Sunday Market yesterday, and have been watching DVDs in the evening. This morning, before launching into the car rehab project, we went out to breakfast at Georgina's on 85th in Greenwood. I had forgotten what wonderful food they have, particularly the pita bread with quince jam. Eating there is like eating in someone's kitchen.

Mysterious traveler is actually traveling

2011-08-14T21:40:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this in the back bedroom of a restored Craftsman bungalow in the historic district of Carson City, a block from the governor's mansion. Crickets are chirping in the back yard, and sprinklers are hissing. It's summer in a small town/city.

We flew in to Reno yesterday afternoon, and then drove to Berkeley for an unexpected errand. It got complicated, so we needed to find a hotel -- at 11 p.m. I called the folks the Joie de Vivre chain, which has a lovely hotel I've stayed at in Sunnyvale, and they found is a room at their hotel at the Oakland marina.

Didn't know Oakland had a marina? It's an interesting neighborhood, with trendy clubs, a vegan soul food restaurant, and a lot of urban renewal struggling to happen. The hotel was friendly, the room was clean and fresh, and the bed was comfortable. My one complaint was the bathroom, which had been designed by that notorious and apparently far-ranging Discworld architect, Bloody Stupid Johnson.

It had a feature I've encountered only once before at a hotel, but which stuck in my memory: A glass shower door that when opened more than 1/3 of the way slammed, glass first, into the toilet.

This hotel's version of the slamming shower also had the highest nozzle I've ever seen, a feature which made it impossible to adjust or redirect the light drizzle. There was, as you may gather from this, no bathtub, which is an annoyance to me under normal travel circumstances and, after 10 hours on the road -- I was slightly berserk but made do with a shower.

This morning we got the errand done, drove up to Grass Valley for lunch with relatives who have a beautiful farmhouse, then drove winding roads down to Placerville (a charming old town) and drove from there over to South Lake Tahoe and up to Carson City.

I'll explain tomorrow why we're in Carson City. We wandered around the somewhat forlorn downtown (government buildings, casinos, and little restaurants) and ended up getting salads at a nice place called Sassafras. They call their food eclectic, and they're not kidding. I say it's unusual, somewhat overly exuberant cooking by someone who uses high quality, fresh ingredients. Dessert was a house specialty — homemade popsicles. We had peach-ginger, no sweeteners added, and it was superb. Back to the B&B, where we are going to watch an episode of...what else?...Deadwood.

The garage is done

2011-07-31T23:58:00.000-07:00

We haven't had much summer, but my goal for it has been met:

I cleaned the garage.

Most of what I threw out (for the Happy Hauler to pick up on Tuesday) was left over from the previous owners' remodeling 10 years ago. I realized I was never going to need a box of bolts the size of Havana cigars or large sheets of drywall the cats had peed on. The 8-foot lengths of extra molding required their own shelving system. I realized I could rip down the shelving system, chop the molding to 7 feet, 6 inches, and store it upright in a Rubbermaid wastebasket in the corner, regaining access to the entire wall.

I also discovered I had three orbital sanders, two skil saws, and 35 slot-style screwdrivers (but only 5 Phillips head drivers, which makes me crazy since they're what I'm always looking for). And my beloved circular law seems to be missing.

Hank came over and tested all the electric tools and told me which ones to toss or give away and which ones to keep. He told me one of the orbital sanders just looks like an orbital. It is really a polishing sander.

The duplication was due in part to all of my dad's tools, which I got when my mom moved to Florida last year.

After clearing out all sorts of crummy scraps of drywall and lumber, I had enough wall space that we were able to put up an additional pegboard, and some gigantic wall hooks. Then a lot of the stuff that was hidden in drawers and piled on shelves got hung up, including my dad's Oreck mini shop vac and heap of extension cords in orange, yellow, and green.

The sorting process involved hauling much of the stuff out to the driveway, including the mini-freezer, which desperately needed defrosting. Once the garage was relatively clear, I swept and washed the concrete floor. That was pretty disgusting.

This took all day Friday, Saturday morning, and Sunday afternoon — and Tom ran all the errands to Home Depot while I kept at the organizing. At 8 p.m. tonight I was still affixing labels (in yellow electric tape) to plastic storage boxes and shelves.

It's rather astonishing how much room there now is in the garage. I still need to organize the shelf with the drills and drill bits.

The dog in the night and the jerk who owns it

2011-07-19T23:14:00.000-07:00

We have a neighbor who walks his or her dog in the dead of night and lets it poop on my lawn. Unfortunately, we don't know who it is.

After piles of poop started turning up on a daily basis, I did some research on surveillance cameras. They aren't cheap, so I decided to make a sign first.

It read "Anything your dog leaves on this lawn will be returned to your front porch." I placed it right where the dog had been pooping.

And it worked! The dog's owner was apparently embarrassed enough to keep the hound off my lawn.

Unfortunately, they weren't embarrassed enough to pick up after the dog. Four days after my sign went up, my next door neighbor came storming over to report that now she had four piles of crap on her front lawn. Her little daughter had just stepped in the poop, and she was furious.

She asked if she could borrow my sign. I said yes. Now I'm wondering if that will result in the dog returning to my lawn, or if the lazy owner will simply move the dog one more yard south, to the lawn of a newly remodeled house that is on the market — and has no one living in it who might open the door and catch the dog walker.

If the weather would just warm up, I'd be willing to get up at 4 a.m. and hide out on my enclosed porch so I could catch them in the act and follow the dog owner through the dark to his or her house — with the shit on a shovel.

What's really going on

2011-07-13T11:42:00.000-07:00

• I got an invitation to Google+ (thank you!), signed on, and am sort of waiting to see what happens now. It's a cross between Facebook for grownups and LinkedIn without the recruiters.

• Mabel, the long-clawed black cat, nailed me yesterday morning. I washed the tiny puncture with alcohol, but for the first time I got an infection from a cat scratch. It came on very rapidly while I was at a reading at the U Bookstore last night. I left the store, called the consulting nurse (who reacted as though I were about to collapse in the street), reluctantly skipped dinner, grabbed a bubble tea, and drove off to spend a long, long evening at urgent care. They gave me a tetanus shot and the opportunity to read nearly an entire novel (Kelley Eskridge's intriguing Solitaire) on my iPhone before I finally got the paperwork and directions to the basement late-night pharmacy to get some antibiotics. By 11:30 p.m. I was at Dick's on Broadway, where I finished the book in the car while drinking a delicious strawberry milkshake.

• The Clarion West Write-a-thon is halfway through. I've written one and a half of my three pledged short stories and yesterday ended up using a picture of Sheba to shill for sponsors. I love this picture of Sheba. The Write-a-thon is going very well (for the organization, as well as for the writers).

• I have three big Folklife projects yet to deal with as I wind up my year as board president (target date: September 27).

• There will be vacation of sorts. In July, I'm going to a weekend writers workshop at a remote location on the Washington coast. The conference center burned down, but we still have hotel rooms and apparently are going to wing the rest of it. In August, Tom and I are going to Worldcon in Reno, with a side trip to Lake Tahoe and Carson City. I've never see that part of the country. Against my better judgment, I signed up for a five-day volunteer assignment at the convention that is going to be major fun but demanding. At Worldcon, as at the Folklife festival, volunteering is the heart of the experience.

• The garden is different this year. The peas are disappointing but the beans are going gangbusters (especially my faves, the scarlet runner beans). We have very large, though green, tomatoes. It's the grapes where I've really got my hopes up. They have taken to the new arbor system and there are tiny clusters of grapes everywhere. Now, all we need is hot, sunny weather through August.

What I'm writing

2011-06-29T22:55:00.000-07:00

What I write for a living:

Blog posts and brochures about automated external defibrillators — from stories of rescues to updates on legislation mandating AEDs in schools, gyms, and public places.
Profiles of formerly homeless individuals, most of them long-time "street people" suffering from mental illness and substance abuse who now live in subsidized apartments. I interviewed two of the 10 men who had been costing the city and county as much as $1 million a year in police, hospital, and social services. Once they were in "housing first" communities, the local goverments saved hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Articles about business strategy, on behalf of a local CEO.
Humor columns about home, family, and community.
Websites for government agencies and large non-profits. Many of these are written in government-mandated "plain talk" — a style of communication so effective that one government agency tripled the rate of accurate responses to their letters to businesses and taxpayers.
ebooks and blog posts about the iPhone.
The WriterWay blog for my business.
PowerPoint and Keynote presentations — most of these are "social media audits" or short courses in matching social media tools to an organization's audiences and resources.

What I write for community agencies (on a volunteer basis):

Fundraising appeals
Web pages
Thank-you letters to donors
Marketing materials, press releases, and ads

What I write for myself:

This blog
My new hobby blog at http://fitnessfoodandfashion.wordpress.com
Science fiction short stories

Sadly, the science fiction writing is at the end of the list, even though it's the writing I often enjoy the most. I've started a novella, part of which will be critiqued at the upcoming Cascade Writers Workshop next month. And, as a part of the Clarion West Write-a-thon, I'll be writing three short stories during July, using the "How to write a short story in 90 minutes" techniques taught by author Mary Robinette Kowal.

I'm one of 149 writers who've signed up for the Write-a-thon to raise money for the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Clarion West has come to be the gold standard for speculative fiction writing courses — it's a six-week program taught by the field's top authors, editors, and publishers. The majority of the 18 students selected for the program require scholarship assistance, and the Write-a-thon is one of the primary sources of funding for the scholarships and other program costs.

Please consider supporting me, or one of the other 148 participants (some of them quite famous!) as we write our way through the summer.

The Mystery Menu

2011-06-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

Doug asked for the menu for the easy-to-make summer dinner that fits most dietary requirements. The philosophy behind it is that these are three healthy, hearty dishes and most diets will allow two of them.

1. Grilled meat or fish

The first time, we did steak rubbed with olive oil, garlic, and herbs. The second time, it was salmon cooked in a non-stick fish basket. I think we're going to stay away from chicken because it's fussier on the grill, marinades and basting sauces are a pain, and skinless chicken comes out too dry for company

2. Grilled green vegetables sprinkled with oil and herbs (A large amount — it's amazing how people eat more grilled vegetables than boiled/steamed.)

We grill them in a "dish" of aluminum foil (though you could also use a grilling basket). Thus far, we've grilled green beans, asparagus, and thick-sliced zucchini (this last one sprinkled with oregano, basil, and parsley). If you've got adventurous guests, try cooking the green beans with anchovies, garlic, halved cherry tomatoes, and black olives (a Naked Chef recipe).

You can also do nice things to the veggies after grilling them, like sprinkling chopped marinated sun-dried tomatoes over the zucchini or a little lemon zest over the asparagus.

3. Steamed baby potatoes (the little white, red, and purple ones)

We cut these in half, steam them, and dress them in a vinaigrette. They're pretty! You can serve this dish hot or cold. Depending on the dietary interests of your guests, and how much time you have, you can go with a vegan vinaigrette, a creamy dressing, or a hot honey-mustard dressing with or without bacon. Chopped fresh parsley dresses this up nicely.

While working on these "company" dishes, I made an interesting discovery. I always get frustrated when I cook some cool dish and then discover the only serving dish it fits in is ugly. In this case, I put the vegetables, and the potatoes, into large, attractive serving dishes before I cooked them, and then cooked the amount of food that would fit into the dish.

Bon appetit!

Overbooked

2011-06-23T16:20:00.000-07:00

Last week I was trying to write a humor column about summer in Seattle. The deadline arrived, and all I had were a lot of disjointed anecdotes about trying to cram a whole summer's worth of activities into the nine weeks of actual summer weather between July 4 and Labor Day.

I called the editor and wheedled a 24-hour extension, hoping that somehow inspiration would strike. It did, about five minutes later, when I got an email saying that the conference center where I had been scheduled to attend a workshop next month had burned to the ground.

"Fanastic!" my column-writing alter ego exclaimed as she crossed the workshop off the calendar. "Er, sorry, I hope nobody got hurt."

In real life, the workshop is probably going to take place anyway, at a backup location. But that incident was the perfect illustration of how out-of-hand a summer calendar can get.

Ours was pretty much filled by last week — but this week 8 or 9 new barbecue invitations arrived, plus some neighborhood cat-sitting assignments.

[Make than 10. No joke: Less than 60 seconds after I hit "publish" on this post, T. forwarded to me an invitation to a barbecue for -- tomorrow night.]

One ray of hope for the summer social schedule:

Last week we had friends over to dinner and I served a three-dish menu that worked perfectly. It was fun to cook (two of the dishes are done on the outdoor grill), tasty, and, if you considered the dishes in pairs, the menu works with meat-eaters, vegetarians, low-carbohydrate dieters, or people who prefer a Mediterranean diet with carbs and vegetables.

This solves my perennial summer problem of what to cook for guests. This menu will be repeated throughout the summer with slight variations.

Disaster strikes!

2011-06-20T16:37:00.000-07:00

I thought my week was off to a rough start. My major client had yet another leadership change and now we're back to square one with a number of projects. The new person I talked with there was horrified to discover they haven't paid my last three invoices.

Then, an email arrived that put things in perspective.

It was from the writing workshop I'll be attending in July: The conference center burned down!

Somebody's going to pay

2011-06-12T23:54:00.000-07:00

There are two ways to do this:
1. You write, and I'll pay:
I’ve joined Kate Schaefer and Vonda McIntyre in a Clarion West Write-a-thon challenge:
To help get the Write-a-thon underway, we have each pledged to donate $5 for each participating writer, up to $500, if 100 writers sign up for the Write-a-thon.
Here’s more information: http://clarionwest.net/events_page/write_a_thon
2. Or, if you like, I'll write and you pay:
My goal for this year's Write-a-thon is to develop three new stories using the techniques from Mary Robinette Kowal's workshop on writing a story in 90 minutes. My fundraising goal is $250 for Clarion West. If my friends' support gets me to that goal by July 30, I'll match the $250, dollar for dollar.
To sponsor me: http://www.clarionwest.org/events/writeathon/KarenGAnderson

Off to a great start

2011-06-08T10:39:00.000-07:00

It's for...you.

Note: Identifying information has been changed in this story for reasons that will become apparent.

At the top of my task list this morning was solving an ugly little problem:

One of the organizations I work with, a volunteer group, had put out a flier with a number of contact phone numbers. But one of the numbers is wrong.

Jody, the person whose number was supposed to have been on the flier, called me late last night to point that out.

"People will call and disturb some stranger," she said. "And they won't be able to reach me to get information."

Of course, some of these fliers have already been distributed, and huge piles of them have already been printed and are ready for distribution in the next few weeks.

My task this morning was to call the designers and tell them we needed to correct Jody's contact number and reprint hundreds of fliers. Big fun.

As I contemplated the problem I decided it might help if I figured out first just whose number was on the flier. Perhaps it was the designer's girlfriend, and the whole thing had been a Freudian slip at his end — in which case I could take some high ground around the cost of reprinting the stuff.

I was curious — plus I realized it was an opportunity to warn this poor soul that they might be getting some strange phone calls later in the summer.

So I dialed.

"Hello," said Jody.

"Hi," I said, quickly recovering. "Hey, good news. I think I've solved the problem of the wrong phone number on the flier."

"Really?" she said.

At that point I lost it and began giggling hysterically.

"I...just...dialed...it," I choked out. "And you...answered!"

Jody was flabbergasted.

"I have another number?" she asked. "I need to call the phone company and..."

She caught herself quickly. "No, I think I'll wait until the end of the summer."

May all of today's problems be solved this easily and amusingly.

This old cat

2011-06-07T16:43:00.000-07:00

I woke up at 5 a.m. this morning because Obnoxious Cat was pawing me with her claws. I had a choice: Pull the covers over my head and ignore her and wait until Timid Cat began clawing the cat scratching post and Tornado Cat began yowling and throwing things off the counters in the next room, or just get up, go downstairs, and feed them.

I fed them. The flavor of wet food Tornado Cat currently favors was not in the cabinet, so I went down to the basement to get a can of it. But Tornado cat did not like the wet food, and tried shoving the bowl off the counter. I caught it, and gave her freeze-dried salmon instead.

Obnoxious Cat wanted to go out. I put her out. Tornado Cat began tearing around the house, leaping onto cat trees. She tore into the bathroom, nearly flattening Timid Cat, and I turned on the bathroom faucet for her before she had a chance to pull down the towels and throw the soap into the sink.

While she drank, I went into the kitchen emptied the dishwasher.

Went to turn off the bathroom water, but found Tornado Cat was gone and Timid Cat was now having a drink. Went back to the kitchen and found Obnoxious Cat waiting at the door to be let in again. Let Obnoxious Cat in. Obnoxious Cat promptly devoured the wet food Tornado Cat had ignored.

Timid Cat appeared in the kitchen, and I went to the bathroom and turned off the water.

Horrible glorping sounds from living room. Found Tornado Cat sitting in cat bed and barfing on cat bed and floor. Got spray cleaner and paper towels, cleaned up, and took cat bed down to the laundry room to be washed.

It was now 5:30. Went back up stairs to find Intelligent Cat had appeared from her secret hiding place and was now sleeping on my side of the bed. I crawled in beside her and went back to sleep for three hours.

Ready for Folklife

2011-05-24T23:47:00.000-07:00

I realized around 7 p.m. this evening that I am Ready for Folklife. At least I am ready for Folklife assuming that things go mostly as planned.

I've submitted materials due to my clients this week, and now have two days to get the house ready and my gear packed.

Tom vacuumed the house, I cleaned the bathrooms, and tonight I was mopping the kitchen floor when disaster struck: I'd mopped over to the far end of the kitchen when a cat leaped up on the counter and projectile vomited onto the floor I'd already mopped. Sigh.

All over the place

2011-05-17T22:25:00.000-07:00

Every morning when the iPhone alarm goes off I look at my calendar. Much of what I see surprises me a bit. That's good; if I'd been thinking about it, I probably wouldn't have slept very well.

Occasionally solutions for one of my projects jump into my head while I'm working on a different project. I've started to send myself emails with these ideas.

Other times I get so deeply into a particular project that I can't remember anything else.
Tom walks into my office and for just a millisecond I'm not sure who he is or what he's doing here.

The constants in all of this are the cats. They are always sure they belong everywhere.

Sheba

Spring cleaning: I don't do windows

2011-05-09T19:13:00.000-07:00

I know there are those among you who consider me a neatnik, but, believe me, my brand of cleaning is nothing compared to the way my mom (and her cleaning woman) cleaned the house when I was a kid.

There was weekly dusting that involved the removal of anything that wasn't glued down and moving most of the furniture. An electric broom deployed daily in addition to weekly vacuuming. Bathroom floors (tile) scrubbed on hands and knees with sudsy ammonia. (Just the thought if that last one makes me stop breathing.)

And seasonally my mom would clean out every closet and cabinet in the house, replacing the shelf-liners and draw-liners. Each spring, blankets and sweaters were washed (and occasionally shrunk beyond recognition), aired, and stored with mothballs (again with the breathing) in massive steamer trunks and padded, quilted garment bags of a sort that can no longer be purchased (and neither can the mothballs, thank gods).

These days my spring cleaning consists of sending a bunch of winter sweaters and wool coats out for dry cleaning and throwing the down and fleece clothing into the washer and dryer. Once the stuff is clean, I store it in labeled boxes in the attic along with packets of some herbal moth-discourager.

My big splurge is having all the windows cleaned by a fellow who's insured if he falls off the ladder into my rhodies. After he's done, we haul the screens out various storage nooks and install them. Ready for summer!

I used to take my car in to be detailed every May, but that's no longer urgent because my mom no longer comes out to Seattle for the summer. So the car's exterior is gray-on-gray and the back seat is full of needles from the evergreens I bought at the garden center two months ago. Shhh! I think I can live with it.

Deadlines

2011-05-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

I am looking at deadlines for a series of commitments...it's not so bad now that the first one — a board retreat I was organizing — is done.

The next deadline is for a major-donor "thank you" party I'm organizing (May 11).

After that, it's a deadline for a magazine article (new publication, major article) on May 30. (Yes! Folklife weekend!)

Then there's a deadline for a short story for a writer's workshop later in the summer (due June 15).

I think it says something that I have been completely freaking out about the entertainment events but am actually looking forward to doing the writing. Writing doesn't require cleaning the house, subduing the cats, mowing the lawn, getting dressed up, being diplomatic. In fact, quite the opposite.

Contest: The Mystery Room

2011-04-16T20:07:00.000-07:00

Below are five photos taken in a room in Naples, Florida. If you can guess what this room is, you have your choice of being taken out for espresso or gelato in Seattle or being sent a bottle of Italian olive oil. Have at it! (By the way, I don't expect anyone to get even close to the answer.)

HINT: The room is not in a private residence. And, yes, that's a waterfall in the first photo.

How deep is my swamp?

2011-04-12T16:41:00.001-07:00

My iPad 2 arrived Friday and I haven't unboxed it yet.

A great weekend

2011-04-10T21:47:00.000-07:00

What great weekend! Friday I went out and pressure washed about 1/3 of the hardscaping, getting covered with wet moss (which smells like seaweed). I came in, took a shower, and can't remember what we did Friday night; apparently I was very tired. Kate arrived for the weekend.

Saturday morning Kate and I survived two mediocre yard sales, thanks to the restorative properties of croissants from Besalu. She went off shopping with a friend while I ran a record number of errands, picking up a blue fescue at Swanson's, visiting the dry cleaner in Wallingford, picking up a replacement outlet cover for a patio outlet, dropping off two ancient laptops at the computer recycler near Gas Works Park, picking up a special trellis for the grape arbor at the Fred Meyer garden center sale, and getting an aggregate paver at the stone yard. When I got home, there was time to install the blue fescue and the paver and dig a lot of weeds out of one of the garden beds. My neighbor Jeff came over with some scary power saws and removed the pear-tree stump, right down to ground level. Impressive — more than payback for taking care of their cats at Christmas. Tom got home from his continuing education class around 6:30. We went out to dinner at Fu Man Dumpling with Kate and Janna, then came home and collapsed.

This morning Kate packed up and headed off to a knitting confab. After the Sunday check-in with my mom, I braved light rain to make yet another foray into the garden. This time I dug up a huge rhodie to make room for a high-bush Legacy blueberry bush. This was one of the rhodies I'd transplanted from the south side of the house 8 years ago, possible the one whose transplantation resulted in the need for wrist surgery. This time I approached it with caution. I cut off the branches, then went to work on the stumps, which had apparently once again sent a tap root down into bedrock. After I dug down two feet, the damn thing still wouldn't budge. Tom, on his way to a Potlatch concom meeting, came by and stomped on the stumps. As a result, I was able to pop them out, in two pieces, about five minutes later, and plant the blueberry.

I then prepared an area for the new trellis, but the rain started in earnest before I could make any significant progress on screwing together the various pieces of tress. That may have to wait until after the trip to Florida.

So, I'm now at my desk looking at all the office work I didn't get gone. And not particularly caring about it.

Pressure and Pressure Washing

2011-04-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning with the urge to go out and pressure wash the hardscaping in the garden.

It's not going to happen, unless I get a lot of other stuff done first. I can't believe the lists.

This is the year that I'm spending 50% of my normal work hours and about 99% of my normal dancing, gardening, yoga, etc., hours working with the boards of two non-profits that are in the midst of exciting growth, repair, and transition.

The work isn't a pain; it's fascinating. The brainstorming stuff is, of course, energizing. The people are great. I'm learning to anticipate how people will react, how people will react with each other, and how to create experiences that bring out the best in people — which often means challenging them with responsibility and trust.

I'm also learning how to ask people for help and for money — large amounts — which I find exhausting.

All that said, this is not natural work for me, and never will be. I'm tired, and it's frustrating not to have time for the activities that restore me: aimless wandering around the neighborhood, pottering around in the garden, reading books that I have no idea if I'll like or not, and writing stories that might not pan out and that never have to be posted on a blog. I very much miss demolishing structures, digging up deadwood shrubs, and pressure washing moss off the patio — big, messy, projects that are measured in hours rather than minutes.

I am promising myself: Next year. Please let me get to next year.

Meanwhile, off to write a book review, run a round of errands, and condition the wood on the antique dresser Tom brought out of The Magic Storage Locker.

Antibiotics

2011-03-24T11:38:00.000-07:00

Thank you for all your notes of concern.

Group Health gave me antibiotics; within 6 hours of the first (double) dose, I felt like myself again, and I continue to improve. The goal is to get myself to the presentation tomorrow afternoon.

I have only the vaguest memory of what I've been doing between March 9 and yesterday. I hope I didn't offend anyone, do anything embarrassing, or give anyone else bronchitis.

I do, however, seem to have committed to a really scary amount of activity through the end of June.

Still barking

2011-03-23T11:09:00.000-07:00

I've spent the past two weeks sick with bronchitis, and last night it got worse. I came home from a board meeting hallucinating...I actually have no idea how I drove from Seattle Center to the house. I got here with fever, chills, and the miserable cough that I'd thought was getting somewhat better. It's as if we'd rolled the whole thing back to March 9, and started all over again.

This relapse gets me in to see a doctor at Group Health this afternoon. It's not that I'm particularly sick — if something started out this way, you'd say, hmmm, the flu, big deal — but having been exhausted for two weeks and then getting hit by this is really discouraging.

I'm supposed to be speaking to a IT industry group on Friday, and am hoping that I'll get some kind of medicine that will enable me to deal with a two-hour panel discussion. At the moment, I can't even imagine driving to the event!

Fortunately, I have only one major client project in the works this week, and it can all be done (ghost blogging) from bed. And, fortunately, Tom got better so is able to bring me liquids and take care of the cats when he's not at work.

Unfortunately, the part of last night's meeting at which I committed to organizing and hosting a strategic planing event in April and a cocktail part at the house in May turns out to have not been a hallucination.

Mostly, I'm sorry to be missing the non-rainy weather today. I have five blueberry bushes that need to get planted!

I thought I heard a seal bark

2011-03-09T20:23:00.000-08:00

I get colds a few times a year, but it's been a very long time since I've run a fever. Somewhere along the trip from Seattle to San Jose to Washington, D.C., I was exposed to a bug, and now I'm incredibly sick.
Tom does quite a good job of taking care of me when I'm sick, and I, him, but that doesn't help much -- because we got the same thing at the same time.

After dinner with family this evening we went to a drugstore and I got all the right chemicals (I like chemicals, Tom doesn't) and we took them. Much good it did.

We are both barking like seals, and feel like someone is grinding our joints to dust. The last thing you want, of course, when you have aches from a fever is someone barking like a seal in the bed next to you.

Because it's an inflammation, the aches seem to be focusing on the ankle I chip fractured in October.

It could be worse. We're staying at a very homey hotel and our room has a refrigerator and microwave and coffee maker that is capable of making tea that doesn't taste like coffee. The hotel is full of vending machines with inexpensive name-brand sodas and sparkling water, plus snacks like pretzels. The heat is easy to control, there are plenty of blankets, and a pretty decent bathtub for when the chills get really bad.

Tomorrow night is when we are supposed to go to the events at the Italian embassy. I'm hoping that if we rest and drink lots of fluids from now until then we'll be able to get to the art exhibit opening and lecture and enjoy it as much as we enjoyed the tour of the Canaletto exhibit at the National Gallery this morning.

Flying home on the plane Friday? I am so trying not to think about that.

A few things

2011-03-02T19:12:00.000-08:00

Catalog photo of the "Script" fabric roman
shades from Smith & Noble.

The painters have come and gone, with remarkably little fuss — once they discovered the local Benjamin Moore store had made a mistake mixing the trim color for my office and got that fixed. (Queen Anne Painting; highly recommended).

Now the bathrooms have new (white) paint after 10 years, and all sorts of minor damage to the walls got repaired. Best of all, my office is no longer a sterile, cold white: It's a pale sage green with beige/cream trim. The wall with the large window is done in an accent color: A sunny hacienda-style yellow. The colors are all part of the Cabana color palette from Color and Space, who did the colors for the living room and dining room three years ago and then gave me the rest of the palette for future projects.

When I get back from San Jose and DC, the challenge will be to fill the walls with art. No, actually that will be easy — the challenge will be to do it in a way that looks good. I'm will be, literally, following directions from Martha Stewart Living.

I also want to splurge on an attractive, cat-proof shade for the window. That means no metal or plastic blinds they can bend, no clawable fabric, and no snaggable weaves. I'm thinking either a very sturdy bamboo shade, like the ones in the living room, or this amazing linen roman shade (see photo, above). The shade, from Smith & Noble, is hideously expensive, so it'll likely be either the bamboo — or get a plain linen shade and hire a calligrapher to write all over it!

* * *

Today's weather was the usual mix of sun, snow, rain, sleet, high winds, with the occasional rattle of hail on the roof. I watched in delight as this foul weather tormented the roofers working on the house one block down from us.

Why so sadistic? Well, this was the crummy rental house that, three years ago, had its perfectly nice roof torn off and a shoddy "second story" with a (I love this) metal stove-pipe chimney slapped on.

Apparently that original roof job was so crummy that just three years later they are having to tear off all the asphalt and the plywood and start over again.

It has always been my dream to win a small lottery and use the money to buy that house so I could rip off the second story and that ghastly chimney and reinstate the original roofline — along with it the very pretty view of Puget Sound that I used to enjoy from my kitchen table.

* * *

Sheba. She gives new meaning to
flying toasters.

No update would be complete without mention of the cats. Sheba the deaf white cat is now about 13, and definitely looking older. Yet she still dashes madly about and leaps onto high shelves. Recently she has become even fussier about food — something I associate with age in cats. She used to eat only one flavor of fancy feast; now she won't eat even that, and yowls and throws things (like the toaster oven) off the counter if she isn't given treats, freeze-dried salmon, or baked chicken for her meals. Sheba is such a lovely cat when she isn't yowling or throwing things that this is less annoying that it sounds. After all, baked chicken is good for all of us.

Kaylee, the high-strung little Abyssinian has finally settled down. For the past several months, she's been sitting on my lap late at night when the house is very quiet and I'm wearing a fleece bathrobe. She now comes in and ambushes me when I'm getting out of the tub or shower and she knows I'm about to put on the robe. It takes her several minutes of stomping around and kneading before she sits down to be petted, but this morning she actually skipped the stomping around and relaxed immediately.

Kaylee's half-sister, Zoe, the huge striped non-Abyssinian, is just as clownish as ever. I've never been able to get Zoe to stop clawing me in the face in the middle of the night unless I wake up enough to blast her with a squirt gun. Instead, I've just resigned myself to getting her claws clipped professionally on a regular basis — so I get pawed, rather than clawed, at 3 a.m. (We tried clipping Zoe's nails ourselves but sustained way too much damage. It's a job for the pros, and we take Zoe in along with Mabel, who I wouldn't even dream of trying to clip.)

Mabel, the Bombay, is a lovely, extremely sage cat who treats people as if they were her kittens. She, also, has extraordinarily long, sharp claws. Unlike Zoe, she can retract them. Mabel doesn't seem to have very strong back legs, and she uses her front claws to haul herself up on things, like the bed. Or your lap. OUCH. Mabel sharpens her claws on the cedar posts of the back porch. Zoe has been working on one of the posts for years, but Mabel has been able to demolish her target in just 15 months.

March travels

2011-02-20T19:26:00.000-08:00

I hope that our surprise trip to D.C. in March will be worth the last three hours I just spent on the computer and phone canceling plane reservations to San Jose, making plane reservations from San Jose, to D.C., to Seattle, canceling hotel reservations in Berkeley, extending hotel reservations in Sunnyvale, and trying to make hotel reservations in Washington, D.C., for the week that thousands of people are descending on the city for parents' weekend at George Washington University. (We finally found a hotel with rooms left in Maryland, on the Metro line to D.C.)

Now, for the fun of packing a suitcase, half with casual clothes for San Jose's temperate climate, and half with business and evening dress for what will probably be a late-season blizzard in D.C. (Alarmist? Not hardly. I grew up there, and remember the year that the cherry trees froze in March — oh, wait, they did that again in 2010.)

Why are we going to D.C.? The Italian embassy is opening an art exhibit featuring Italian prints from Tom's late grandmother's collection. Unfortunately, the opening comes right on the heels of our trip to Sunnyvale for Potlatch. Flying back to Seattle for 20 hours just didn't make sense.

Facebook weirdness

2011-01-30T20:40:00.000-08:00

I'll bet you are expecting me to write about Macworld 2011, where I've been all week, but I'm going to write about Facebook instead.

This afternoon my Ballard next-door neighbor, Gwen, commented on Facebook that she'd just seen Green Hornet and it was horrible. I left a comment agreeing that it was awful. A couple of hours later I got an email from Facebook that contained a subsequent comment in the Green Hornet thread, left by a friend of Gwen's named Sasha.

Here's the weird part: I realized when I saw her last name that Sasha is someone I already knew...because she was my next-door neighbor when I lived in Wallingford 10 years ago.

Good grief. I mean, what are the chances of your next-door neighbors from two different neighborhoods knowing each other?

The bad and the good

2011-01-18T15:44:00.000-08:00

Bad: Steve Jobs announces he's taking a health-related leave of absence.
Good: All my Apple and ex-Apple friends are worrying about him together.

Bad: My biggest and best client gets acquired by a foreign company and the executive I report to gets laid off.
Good: I have more time to work on book-writing projects for my publisher, which I've discovered I like to do.

Bad: I have less reliable income.
Good: My partner suddenly has lots of work coming in.

Bad: My volunteer work seems to be full of urgent stuff and people with communications issues.
Good: I'm finally learning to prioritize and to deal with difficult people.

Bad: It's rainy and gray and soggy and cold.
Good: I have waterproof gardening boots and gardening gloves.

Big improvements, small repairs

2011-01-11T22:08:00.000-08:00

It wasn't until we went to clean the house today that I realized how much has changed around here in the past month.

There's a beautiful new window in my office. It's not just a much nicer view of the garden, it's got insulated glass, snug fittings, and an insulated frame. No more drafts at my desk! No more closing the curtains to get insulation!

The basement den has been completely rearranged to create a 7-foot deep area in which to use the XBox, Kinect, and Dance Central. There are probably a few more changes yet to come down there that I'm in denial about, involving large bookcases.

The living room is now in its post-holiday configuration, which is more spacious than usual.

All that's the good news.

The bad news? We're in one of those weeks in which things break. Not badly, and not irreparably, but in annoying and time-consuming fashion.

It started with the annual visit from the oil company to tune up the furnace yesterday. The upstairs is always chilly when we wake up, but this morning it was exceptionally so. The seriousness of the situation became apparent when I went down to the kitchen and discovered it was 52 degrees. All attempts to revive the furnace failed, so I called the company. They apologized and sent out the serviceman, who discovered that some new equipment he'd installed had malfunctioned. He put in yet another piece, and, well, we'll see what the temperature is tomorrow morning.

In the midst of the furnace follies, I went to take a shower and the plastic handle on the shower valve shattered. There is now no way to control water flow and temperature without grasping the metal stem with a pair of pliers. I was reluctant to get scalded, so went dripping upstairs to the stall shower. We didn't get out to the plumbing store today, but "replace faucet" is at the top of tomorrow's to-do list. I sure hope it is a realistic do-it-yourself task and we don't end up having to bring out the plumber.

These things tend to happen in threes. I am now eying the refrigerator, dishwasher, washer, and dryer suspiciously — though they are all four under extended warranty. Clogged drain, anybody?

Thanksgiving at the Shady Rest

2010-11-24T19:15:00.000-08:00

Most people will spend tomorrow dealing with a 14-pound bird; I'll spend it dealing with a 14-pound cat.

Two days ago, as the temperature plunged, Tom and I went to check on Smokey, my cat who adopts elderly people. Smokey has been living 7 blocks north of us, in the greenhouse of an elderly Norwegian woman, for the past three years. We went up last month to make sure the barn heater we'd installed for him two years ago was plugged in, and we found Smokey terribly thin and frail. As was the little old lady. She was confused; the cat was unhappy.

Her son was in the process of moving in to the house to take care of her, and we impressed on him the important of taking care of Smokey -- he'd apparently never had a cat before. The cat has since regained the weight he'd lost.

The woman and her son were pleased to see us Tuesday and they seemed relieved that we were going to take the cat to spend a couple of days in a warm TV room. The reason they don't let the cat inside is that she has severe osteoporosis and has, over the past few years, broken several bones -- including her hip. If she trips over Smokey, she's done for.

Smokey's getting on in years, and less able to survive extreme cold in the greenhouse with just the heated pad in his box. So we brought him home, and he's in the TV room, having a ball with lots of cat food, water, and petting (in the greenhouse, his food is often grabbed by raccoons and other cats). To our delight, the Bombay, Mabel, was very welcoming to Smokey and they get along as if they'd known each other for years. Upstairs, the tabbies are pretending nothing is going on, and Sheba, the deaf cat, could care less.

When it warms up tomorrow, Smokey goes back to the greenhouse -- along with an apple pie for the woman and her son.

I talked with our vet today -- and followup call about Sheba -- and told him the latest in the Smokey saga. I bring Smokey in every year for shots and flea meds, so the vet knows the back story. He predicts that some day Smokey will decide to live with us again.

His first winter in the greenhouse, Smokey walked 7 blocks home every night to sleep in our basement, returning to the greenhouse at 6 in the morning. We're pretty sure he still knows the way home.

Weather nightmares

2010-11-23T05:19:00.000-08:00

I guess this winter storm qualifies as a weather nightmare, as it woke me up in the middle of the night. Wind howling, metal vent for the upstairs shower fan rattling, and the whole upstairs shaking. The view out the kitchen door is weird — gigantic bright white clouds looming in the east, moving slowing southward, and one star visible above a neighbor's fir tree.

The heater kicked in around 3 a.m. — something that almost never happens, as the house retains heat well and I set the thermostat to 62 at night.

Last night I spent two hours driving four miles to pick Tom up from work at Westlake and Denny. While most of the drivers on the city streets knew to go slow (10 miles an hour) there were enough people trying to whip around at 20 that when they hit their brakes they went out of control, spun, and slid off the street. I was astonished by a bicyclist who rode onto Leary Way, a few yards in front of my car. I braked slowly, then applied my horn. He was astonished to realize that I couldn't just slam on the brakes for him -- and that he couldn't just speed up on the sheer ice. When I crossed the Fremont Bridge and got on to Westlake, traffic was going less than 1 mile an hour. For entertainment, we had pedestrians darting across the street in front of our cars, several of whom promptly fell flat on their backs on the ice, in front of oncoming traffic in the opposite lane, causing those cars to slam on their brakes, fishtail, and go up onto the sidewalks (if they were lucky) or into other vehicles (if they weren't). Fortunately, no one hit the pedestrians.

I'm supposed chair a board meeting downtown tomorrow night, and trying decide what do about that. One weather site says the sun will come out tomorrow, all the ice will melt, and road conditions will be back to normal by evening — albeit about 12 degrees. But I find that hard to believe. I need to decide in the morning whether to cancel the meeting, or try to hold it online or by phone.

The situation here is incomprehensible to folks from back East, where a city crews would have strewn the streets with sand and salt hours ago, and it would have been a normal, if gritty, commute. But in a city where snow and icy conditions occur only once or twice a year, buying a large enough fleet of sand trucks, maintaining a network of sand and salt supply yards, and keeping this system on standby would be too great an expense.

I hope everyone has the sense to stay safely at home tomorrow. In weather like this, I always think of my insane employer from 15 years ago. In the far, dark, past, the company had been involved in city emergency services, and it had required all employees to report for work, even in severe storm conditions. By the time I joined the company, it was primarily an insurance firm, and the vast majority of employees were clerical staff who worked in administrative buildings. Yet the company still required all employees to attend work during storms, and to arrive within one hour of their usual start time — or else the day was counted as an unexcused absence and charged to their vacation time. Of course, by this time the company had employees who lived as far away as Tacoma and Issaquah, for whom a storm commute would require leaving home at four a.m. or earlier.

As the editor of the employee newsletter, I had been told to "explain" this policy to employees, an assignment I found...difficult. When I challenged the HR representative who wanted the policy explained, I asked how single mothers with toddlers who lived in distant suburbs were supposed to make this commute at 4 a.m. when the day care center was closed because of snow and Metro bus service was cancelled. His sneering answer: "Well, these people should have thought of that before they stopped using birth control."

I still think of this jerk during severe winter storms. He lives, childless, in a condo in the city and is probably one of those pedestrians darting out in front of cars.

Please drive carefully anyway.

Heading home tomorrow

2010-11-12T20:11:00.000-08:00

Today is my next-to-last day in Florida.

It's been a good visit with my mother...we got huge amounts done, from handling legal stuff to putting up shelving, visiting friends, shopping at Coconut Pointe (that's how they name things down here), going to pool and beach, figuring out her new TV controls, updating the firmware on her modem, and discovering that the dust buster does, indeed, work.

I've been walking two miles a day, doing ankle exercises, and was even able to do some skipping tonight. I think my sprained/fracture ankle is nearly healed.

I gave a presentation to her Mac users group (about my iPhone ebook) and I worked on several projects for clients, Folklife, and Clarion West. I don't think anyone in Seattle would have realized I was gone if I hadn't told them. Except, of course, for Tom, who was home wrangling cats, working his new Westlake massage studio gig, repairing furniture, hauling junk to Goodwill, and otherwise keeping the home fires burning.

The schedule for next week is somewhat scary. It even includes dinner with a cousin I have never met, who will be in town for a conference.

Holiday (shopping) tradition: Best of the Northwest

2010-11-01T23:48:00.000-07:00

For some people, the holidays begin after Halloween; for others, it's after Thanksgiving. For me, it's whenever Best of the Northwest happens. (Nov. 12 - 14 this year.)

It's without a doubt the highest concentration of top-quality arts and crafts in the region — the stuff not only looks dazzling, it holds up for years. (My favorite evening bag, made from the shaft of a designer cowboy boot, with beaded fringe and a beaded, strap is a Best of the Northwest find, as are my copper pine-cone earrings.)

This year I'll catch only the tail end of it (on Sunday afternoon). Save something for me!

(Note: it's moved yet again. This year Best of the Northwest is at Pier 91, near the Magnolia Bridge.)

Somewhere, there's a schedule

2010-10-18T10:57:00.000-07:00

OK, I'd like to know how the cats do it.

How do they decide whose turn it is to sleep on the bed at night? How do they know who guards the front window, and who goes out at 5:30 a.m. to patrol the property? How do they determine who gets to sleep on the bathmat at night, and who gets to wake me up in the morning?

There has got to be some kind of schedule, because they trade off. The tasks get done, but it's not always the same cat doing it.

Loving technology, hating website analyses

2010-10-15T17:17:00.000-07:00

Marketing the ebook for the past two weeks has given me the chance to do what I've loved to do for the past 30 years — muck around with technology.

There are a lot of little backroads with the iPhone, and it's fun to see the solutions people come up with when they get stuck in the mud. I already have some updates for the ebook, which will initially appear on the publishers' blog.

The book itself is not selling as well as I'd hoped — the publisher markets to tech-oriented audiences, and those folks don't buy "basics" books. I am discovering that the iPhone newbies who are curious about the book will click through from my marketing pages but don't buy — I suspect they are wary of buying it through the publishers' website, which does not have PayPal or other familiar payment options. I am hoping that when the book is available through iBooks and some other ebook publishers, that payment barrier will be eliminated.

I was fortunate that as I worked on the book marketing and dealt with my injured ankle, my main client had two weeks of downtime.

I was able to complete two small business website evaluations and have decided that I don't want to do them any more. They involve educating the clients about technology, about marketing communications, about online communications, and about SEO — plus breaking the news to them that they need to divorce the web designer who saddled them with a cutesy, out-dated website with no content management system and start from scratch with a WordPress-based site. No fun at all, and I find that I spend too much time trying to make the reports I send them diplomatic as well as informative — so it's not even very profitable for me.

It would be fun about now to take a couple of weeks off to work on jewelry or cooking or furniture refinishing. I tried gardening, but my ankle didn't like it, and I don't dare try digging anything up!

An exciting weekend

2010-10-09T22:44:00.000-07:00

Laundry. Ironing. I begin to wonder if there is a Guinness World record category for things like that.

My ankle is healing amazingly well, but I decided not to risk walking around at the antiquarian book fair today. Instead, I stayed home and blogged about demonic yoga and did laundry. Not just laundry laundry, but tablecloths and curtains and pet beds and even a full-size sheepskin (which is done with dish soap, not laundry soap).

The winter rains have begun. It's warm, green, and wet outside — sort of like an aquarium.

Ouch!

2010-10-03T23:28:00.000-07:00

I've spent the day in bed with a sprained ankle. I was very luck it didn't break — I tripped and fell on the stairs this morning, and had to get x-rayed at Group Health. Everyone was surprised when the x-rays didn't show a fracture. The ankle is showing signs of improvement already, and I'm wearing a cute little black lace-up ankle brace that looks rather steampunk. I'm relying on ibuprofen and have the painkillers down to a minimal level. (They gave me a huge dose this morning at the hospital because they thought they were going to have to put me in a cast.)

Tom has been doing my list of household chores, from laundry to cooking a pot roast to cleaning up all the paperwork on the dining room table. Sadly, he looks as harassed and exhausted as I usually do on Sunday nights, and is just as unwilling to actually stop working and get to bed.

The cats' behavior is fascinating. I screamed in pain for a few minutes when I went down this morning, and now the cats are either comforting me or patrolling the yard for the predator that they (logically) think must have attacked one of their pack. This is not just a fanciful interpretation. The only cat that is not either comforting me or being vigilant is Sheba: being deaf, she didn't hear me scream and is unaware of any threat.

Psst! It's a soft launch*

2010-10-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

*A "soft launch" means that a system is live but there is no official announcement yet.

My iPhone Basics ebook is now available from Take Control ebooks, and the readers of the Mysterious Traveler are the first to hear about it! I'll tell everybody else on Monday, when the publisher rolls out the PR.

If you visit the webpage, you can download the free sample PDF, which includes the introduction and these sections:

Deciding What to Buy (Do you need the iPhone 4 or would the inexpensive iPhone 3GS be enough?)
AppleCare (Who needs it, and who might get by without it?)
Accessories (What's available, and what's a must-have?)

You'll also find some teasers for key chapters.

You are more than welcome to pass the word about the ebook's availability, but please don't link back to Mysterious Traveler. Just use one of the book's URLs, which are:

http://budurl.com/iphonebasics or http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/iphone-basics

You can buy and download the ebook ($10) or order the print edition ($20.99).

If you purchase the electronic version, the book can be electronically updated at no cost. That's important — Apple updates operating system software frequently, and we'll be updating the book to keep it current.

The publisher currently has a 30% discount deal if you buy the ebook with two other ebook titles — I highly recommend Joe Kissell's new ebook on dealing with email in iOS 4, which is also in soft launch today.

The pinnacle often feels like a plateau

2010-09-30T15:39:00.000-07:00

About 15 years ago when two attorney friends of mine were enjoying tremendous media coverage during a murder trial, they noted that what probably looked like a career high point from the outside was a difficult and even disturbing time for them.

I'm there, now.

My first book, an ebook, comes out in the next few days. (I'll post here when it happens.) But I'm frustrated at not being able to take a day or two to enjoy the process for rolling out the PR for it on various websites and blogs.

I'm freaking out over a half-dozen projects for my web content business. The business requires a certain momentum to remain successful, which means that I can't "park it" for more than a day — or even guarantee that during the day I park it I won't get a ticket from an impatient client accustomed to "always on" service.

On Monday, an old friend from the folk arts scene died unexpectedly. This is someone I've worked with on folk arts events, including the Northwest Folklife board, since 1985. He was all involvement and no ego, and, as you can imagine, someone like that was in demand everywhere. He did everything from running the sound board at dances (of course, he had his own sound system he'd share) to guiding the executive committees of several organizations. Yeah, he was good.

I want some time to spend with friends talking about what he meant to us, and, even more, I want to spend some time on the dance and music scene he worked so hard to foster.

Instead, I spent the day writing a document explaining to a client how the Protect Document function works (it works horribly!) in Word.

Lots of vivid things happen to me, every day. I've got to figure out some way to better experience them.

At Foolscap

2010-09-24T23:13:00.000-07:00

I'm at Foolscap in Redmond this weekend, setting up the auction that raises funds to underwrite the group's publicity/outreach work.

In other exciting news, my ebook on the iPhone is likely to be published late next week. I've started a website that will support it, iPhone 4 Tips, and ordered cards for the book (business cards that focus on how to purchase the book rather than how to contact me). I already have two speaking engagements and one radio interview scheduled. And, weirdly, there's going to be a reading at Hugo House Oct. 5 of the book of essays on women over 50 (In Our Prime) that I contributed to a year or so back.

It is useful to be at Foolscap with so many other authors, both new and seasoned, and listen to war stories.

My regular client work — blogging for my major client, and newsletter articles for three others, continues to hum along. There are two small businesses that I'm doing brief web audits for; unfortunately, I've never figured out a way to make money doing small business websites. The answer is to design website seminar for small business owners, which was what I was supposed to have been doing this summer when the ebook project turned up.

September went by in a blur. I'm hoping October is a little more reflective and that I find a better yoga class.

Rejection

2010-09-07T21:15:00.000-07:00

This is a story about rejection. It has, if not a happy ending, at least an optimistic one.

As many of you know, I write fiction. Each spring I take the half-day writers workshop at Potlatch. Four or five writers submit stories in advance and then gather to critique each others' work and have it critiqued by the workshop instructor.

Last year, after the workshop, I was talking with another writer of unpublished short fiction and we challenged each other to a submitting contest. The problem, you see, if you love writing, is not writing.

It's submitting what you write — and getting those rejection letters.

One of my Potlatch-community mentors, David Levine, endeared himself to me by publishing a spreadsheet showing how many times his stories are submitted and rejected before being published. He blogs often about getting a story rejected and sending it on to the next publication. It's inspiring. Shortly after I met him, one of David's short stories, "Tk'tk'tk," not only got published in a major genre magazine, but it won a Hugo award (presented at WorldCon by Harlan Ellison, who growled "David Levine, are you here? Get your ass up here!").

Anyway, back on earth...

My friend Julie and I got chatting after Potlatch and challenged each other to a submitting contest. First person to submit wins.

Nothing happened for a few months, but then came the Clarion West Write-a-thon, a fundraising event to benefit the Clarion West Writers Workshop. As a member of the Clarion West board, I needed to gather people to support my writing goals for the summer. I asked for, and got, $250 in support for my goals. My goals were to submit two stories.

Which I did.

(A huge thank you to the friends — and one complete stranger — who underwrote my work.)

Here's the story of what happened:

The first story, a dystopian tale about a bitter elderly woman in the near future, was rejected by a Major Science Fiction Magazine about three weeks after I sent it. This was the kind of rejection you hear about. The proverbial self-addressed stamped envelope arrived, containing the cover page of my manuscript with a slip of paper (God forbid they should waste a whole page) stapled to it that basically said "Does not meet our needs."

At the time I got the first rejection, I was dragging my feet with the second submission. It's a story far better suited to one of the Big Three science fiction and fantasy publications. A pro who had reviewed it for me had said if I made a few modifications to it she'd be willing to "introduce it" to a magazine editor. I made the modifications, but wasn't able to connect with her. Time was running out on the Clarion West Write-a-thon, so I went ahead and sent Story #2 off to Another Major Science Fiction Magazine.

To appreciate what happened next, you should know that Story #2 has a peculiarity that had alarmed everyone in my last writing workshop: It's about a writer, and you aren't supposed to use a writer as a protagonist. However, people had agreed that because it was a humorous story, and didn't take the writer seriously, I might be able to get away with it. Also, the writer is not a science fiction writer — he's a writer of Los Angeles crime fiction novels. So, off it went.

And this is where the story gets optimistic.

After four weeks of waiting, the story got rejected. But it got rejected in that wonderful, constructive way that you want. I got a personal letter from The Big-Name Editor. He'd thought my story was funny — he even played along with the joke in the rejection letter. Which was a helpful analysis of what in the story had worked for him — and what hadn't. My God, he'd read the whole thing!

So tonight I opened up my spreadsheet (yes, I have a spreadsheet, just like David does) and I recorded the rejection. I haven't quite decided where to send the story next, as the market for humorous urban fantasy is limited.

But that's OK. Because I have a Halloween story out for consideration at a small online publication. And I'm hustling to meet a deadline to submit a fable for a short story collection. And the writing is the fun part.

Yard sales, basement, and ice cream

2010-08-28T23:44:00.000-07:00

This morning Tom and I went to yard sales with Beth. We soon discovered that the last Saturday of August is a yard-sale madhouse — apparently everyone decides this is their last chance to unload stuff before winter sets in. Prices were outrageously good, from Asian antiques to brand-new designer clothes. We saw, but didn't need, some wonderful furniture. We bought a professional mat cutter, blades and all. I got a blue-and-white pin-stripe cotton blouse that makes me look like Girl Genius.

As is my habit, I came home, moved the new stuff in, and set about bagging an equal amount of stuff to take to Goodwill on Monday — most of it clothes. This led me into the deep storage-recesses of the laundry room, under the basement stairs where the cats like to hide. What a mess! I hauled out a lot of stuff I simply trashed, a lot that needed to be washed, and I found the missing plug-in heating pads for the cat beds.

The laundry room cleanup was so extensive that I got into the garage and triaged the remainder of my dad's tools and hardware left from my mom's move to Florida.

This didn't leave much time for gardening, and the next thing I knew it was dusk, and time for a late dinner. I'd promised Tom spaghetti. We have a lot of basil growing in the garden, so I did a Genovese pesto sauce (but with parmesan instead of pecorino Sardo). It was outrageously good. I realize I should make it for guests, but who do we know who would be willing to wait until 8:30 at night for dinner?

After dinner it was time to make the cream base for the ice cream we're taking to Diana's ice cream social tomorrow. This involves heating half-and-half to 175 degrees, blending that into an egg/sugar mixture, heating it all to 175 and stopping just short of creating a custard. Then I pour it through a sieve and add cream, vanilla, and a tiny bit of salt.

At that point you usually add the flavoring (fruit, etc.) and refrigerate the base for 4 - 12 hours. Half of this base is going to be made into butter pecan (you churn it, then mix in chopped pecans that have been baked and then tossed in melted butter) but the other half is going to be an extremely unusual flavor that our chef friend Nilos suggested. I looked up the recipe and it dates to 1760!

I'll reveal what it is after I find out how the people at the ice cream social react to it.

Ray the Engineer

2010-08-16T22:41:00.000-07:00

Today must have been Unexpected Emergencies Day and I missed the memo. Everything I thought I'd finished turned out to have a time-critical Stage II or Stage III that nobody told me about.

So I spent today glued to my chair, working. Underneath my office, in the laundry room, was Smokey, my former cat. He's staying with us for a couple of days because the vet is trying to find out if he has a parasite. Smokey, who is accustomed to living outdoors in a greenhouse at Amelia's, did not much enjoy his day in the laundry room. But he is a passive cat, and simply glared at me when I came in with food. Use the litterbox, cat, and you can leave!

Across the hall from Smokey, in the den, was Mabel, Tom's cat. She can't go out until the abscess under her chin heals. We let her out for a bit last night, but only under strict supervision. Mabel is a far more cheerful prisoner than Smokey, but perhaps it's because she has a nice perch by an open window. (No, it's because Mabel is one of the smartest, coolest cats ever.)

When I finally finished my regular work at 9:30 p.m., I realized that I have a humor column due to an editor on Wednesday. Tom looked alarmed to hear that because I'm pretty far from humorous at the moment.

I'd been sketching out a piece about strange house sounds, but I'm not feeling whimsical enough to give that the light touch it needs. So I pulled out a sketch I'd started some months ago about my frustrations about having heaps of obsolete electronic gadgets and mysterious cables. Since I'm currently halfway through writing the second draft of a technology ebook, a rant about computer cables seemed oh so appropriate. And, yes, it really caught fire and writing it has even cheered me up a bit.

Developing the gadgets-and-cables story allowed me to introduce a new character into the humor column's cast — Ray the Engineer. He's a composite of two or three of my technology fix-it friends (you know who you are — Ray is you, but funnier).

Whatever happens tomorrow: I'm going to yoga at noon.

Bad cats

2010-08-12T13:19:00.000-07:00

One of my clients went on vacation last week, meaning that much of the project management and decision-making work he handles on various projects has found its way down the line to me. I can hardly wait until he gets back.

I completed the first draft of the technology book, but now have a lot of additional work to do. I'd hoped to get to it this week, but, thanks to client #1, it hasn't happened.

And, in all fairness to him, there are the cat problems:

Zoe, the big, annoying tabby, is going through a bullying phase. The other cats have always pretty much ignored her (she blocks the doors, and takes a desultory swat at any cat that walks past) but about a week ago I noticed Mabel, the new black Bombay, was avoiding Zoe and even avoiding the house. Two nights ago, Mabel spent the night outside, then came in and spent yesterday holed up in the basement. I kept checking on her, and she seemed cheerful. She was eating, but sneaking around and avoiding Zoe, who I had to move out of Mabel's path a couple of times. This morning Mabel ate breakfast and went upstairs to her cat bed. I was suspicious, and went up to pet her and came away with my hand covered with blood. She had a huge, fresh abcess under her chin, and was running a fever.

Mabel is now at the vet, recovering from minor surgery to clean out the abcess and remove dead skin. I'm sure she'll recover just fine, but I'm glad we got her in for treatment. I'm not sure if Zoe, who has extremely long claws, caused the injury or if Zoe just took advantage of Mabel being injured to bully her, but Zoe is going to be under close scrutiny and will get "time outs" in the bathroom if she so much as looks funny at Mabel.

I discovered Mabel's injury just as we were about to go up to Amelia's to check on Smokey. Smokey is a 14-year-old black Russian Blue I found in Wallingford 12 years ago. When I moved to Ballard, I brought Smokey, who kept running off to move in with elderly people. He finally settled with my elderly neighbor Steve, and lived there for four years until Steve went to a nursing home (and was afraid if he brought Smokey, the cat would have run off). Smokey came back to our place, didn't much like the (then new) tabby kittens and wandered off and found Amelia, who had just lost her husband. She lives alone seven blocks north of us. Smokey "commuted" for a year before moving in permanently with Amelia.

Amelia is extremely fragile — she's only in her early 70s, but has severe osteoporosis and must weight less than 90 pounds. She can't have Smokey in the house because if she tripped over him in the dark, it could kill her. So Smokey lives in a very large glass greenhouse in her backyard. She's out there tending plants every day, even in the winter, so he gets plenty of attention. We go up every couple of months with Smokey's flea medicine and take him for his shots and checkup once a year.

In late June, Smokey, now 14, had the expensive geriatric blood tests and got perfect scores. But the vet noticed he had lost some weight, and asked us to check him. We went up yesterday and were shocked to see how thin he was. It's possible he has parasites (living and eating outdoors) or that he has cancer. We went back today, and, after talking with Amelia, we are also wondering if he isn't getting enough food and water. We left a water dish for him.

Amelia seems to be increasingly confused, and I'm wondering if she is simply forgetting to feed him. Amelia has a son who stops by frequently and takes very good care of her, but I doubt he is particularly concerned about the cat. We are going to go up every other day and police the situation, and feed Smokey some snacks and make sure his water bowl is cleaned and filled. And we're going to take him in to the vet Monday morning and see about getting him parasite medicine that would be safe for an elderly cat to take.

Last winter, we couldn't get Amelia to keep Smokey's cat bed heater plugged in (she was afraid of tripping over the cord). If Smokey does indeed recover from whatever is causing him to lose weight, I'm thinking that, come October, we will need to convert the outdoor pet-bed heater to run off a battery pack and simply go up and replace the batteries every few weeks.

Smokey is exactly the same age as Sheba, the deaf white cat, and you can really see the difference between the health of a pampered, mostly indoor cat like Sheba and an outdoor animal like Smokey. The way Sheba leaps and gallops and vaults through the house every morning you'd never know she's 14. She even still gets up on the next-door neighbors' roof.

Back to work...

The book project — and everything else

2010-07-25T16:32:00.000-07:00

I'm writing a technology book under a tight deadline. The first half of the first draft just came back from the editor. She seems to like it.

Writing the book is completely fun! The stressful part is dealing with the expectations of other clients — and associates on volunteer projects — who are used to having me readily available. It is very hard for me to say "no." I'm more likely to say "yes," look freaked out, and then go into my office and throw things.

The hallmark of a good conference

2010-06-28T14:16:00.000-07:00

I'm told the hallmark of a good conference is that you leave wishing you had attended every single one of the panels. That was certainly the case with Fourth Street. But I found that the panels I attended had so much information and so many ideas that there just wasn't room for anything else in my head.

Next year they are talking about have a writers workshop the week before Fourth Street, but I wish instead that they'd have it the week after. It's frustrating the get all these ideas and inspiration at the convention and have no time to use them when you get home and go back to work.

Of course, for quite a few people at Fourth Street, their work is writing fiction. Mine is writing non-fiction, and I'm getting ready to start my first non-fiction book project (as a writer rather than a contributor or editor). I'm not nervous or worried, but I am determined to clear the decks of small projects for the next two months — which means I won't be writing much fiction.

Hail in Minneapolis

2010-06-26T07:35:00.000-07:00

Last night, as a bunch of us sat down to dinner, we realized that the sky outside the hotel's cathedral-style atrium had turned green, and water was gushing across the skylights. Some of us went out through the lobby doors to witness golf-ball size hail bouncing along in the parking lot. It went on for at least 30 minutes and was pretty spectacular. Unless your car was parked in the back parking lot, which flooded.

Getting away from it all

2010-06-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

I'm a notoriously cranky packer but a great traveler. The second I walk through the doors into Sea-Tac, all thoughts of garden-watering schedules, feline demands, last-minute clothing repairs, and my clients' supposed emergencies vaporize.

I'm on vacation!

I don't know if it's this mindset that makes magical things happen, or if it's just that the mindset makes a lot of what happens seem magical, but travel is fun. (And it helps that I'm traveling with The Scholarly Gentleman.)

The plane to Minneapolis got cancelled, but miraculously replaced, so the four-hour delay was only 40 minutes, and we got to Minneapolis roughly on time. Delta's avaricious baggage checking fees meant that TSG took a roll-aboard suitcase (filled more with books and flyers than clothes) and wore his brown Victorian top hat.

It got some looks, but none more startled that the look from the slim young woman in Arrivals at Minneapolis who was also wearing a brown Victorian top hat. Hers was theatrically outsized, and had an orange wig attached. That, and her Steampunk clothing, indicated she was for some reason channeling Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter from the recent Alice in Wonderland film.

I read Kim Newman's Anno Dracula on the plane, a clever, name-dropping Victorian vampire/Ripper/mystery novel (it mentioned Dodgson aka Lewis Caroll) that seemed to me like a novella that got bundled up in a lot of back and forth extra details. But, then, I think that almost all Ripper books are better at novella length. The ending, however, was great.

Fourth Street doesn't officially start until today, but we got off to a grand start last night with 30 or so of the early birds doing the premiere reading of Jo Walton's comedy "Three Shouts on a Hill." I got to play King Lugh, which involved a lot of stern bellowing.

This morning got off to a very slow start. I sat down at the hotel room desk and wrote a customer profile (as a result of finally chasing down the interview subject, by phone, yesterday evening). It felt great to get that sent off.

The Clarion West Write-a-thon is underway, and I just saw the list of last week's donors to my Write-a-thon page. I was touched, surprised, charmed, mystified — you name it — by the folks who donated to support my work and the Clarion West Writers Workshop. More than 70 of us — Clarion West graduates, board members, and friends of Clarion West — have created Write-a-thon pages with excerpts from our fiction writing and descriptions of our writing goals for the six weeks of the Write-a-thon. (It runs in parallel with the summer workshop, at which the students, many of them able to attend Clarion West only through our scholarship support, are having the writing experiences of their lives.)

In my case, the Write-a-thon is a "submit-a-thon." I've got three or four finished pieces that need me to stop polishing them and send them out to editors of magazines. I was greatly encouraged last week by an award-winning speculative fiction writer who said the reason a story doesn't have to be perfect is that editors like to find some flaw in it that they can analyze and tell you to fix. I'm not sure that's true, but it is encouraging.

Please donate. If my page has brought in $250 in total donations by the end of July, I've promised to match my supporters' gifts with an additional $250 — which about the amount I'll make if one of the stories I submit gets purchased.

Positively 4th Street

2010-06-23T20:58:00.000-07:00

We're off to the 4th Street Fantasy Convention this weekend. It's a science fiction literary convention that emphasizes contemporary fantasy (Neil Gaiman, Steven Brust, Jo Walton, etc.) and draws a number of editors from the New York publishing world. It also attracts the sort of folks who are interested in gourmet chocolates, arcane teas, folk music jams, and late-night discussions.

It's held at a convention hotel that didn't do much for me last year, but which is now adjoined by a fabulous new mall with ethnic restaurants and high-end shops. And it's near a couple of Vinyasa yoga studios.

I am expecting to like the trip.

As usual, it's extremely difficult to get out of town. We're coordinating the professional cat sitter who comes in the evenings with the neighbors who come in to feed the cats in the morning and the other neighbors who are leaving Saturday and whose cats I'll be caring for as soon as we return on Monday. (That meant I had to tell our cat sitter about the cats I'm responsible for Monday in case something awful happens and I don't come back from Minneapolis — she knows where the key is so those cats won't starve.)

To complicate it all, Mabel, our black cat, decided this morning to teach the striped cats how to catch a mouse. I removed the mouse from the house, but the stupid thing kept coming back and sitting on the back porch. I thought it had finally gone, but the cats got it again, and it had to be delivered to a large field a block away before things came to a fatal conclusion. The cats are still skulking around the back yard looking for it.

Weird things in the garden

2010-06-20T18:55:00.000-07:00

Every time I look out in the garden, I see something else strange.

I just looked out the window from my office and saw a gigantic, six-foot weed in my neighbor's yard, towering over the fence. I hope I remember to get over there tomorrow and pull it out. He doesn't garden.

Friday after work I went out into the back garden and came to grips with the fact that a perfectly innocent hardy geranium that I've had for more than 10 years in a concrete pot somehow got loose and took root (via seeds) all over the back garden beds, crowding out the blue star creeper and various other things. Little yellow poppies were about to crowd out the strawberries, but I removed them.

My take on this is that the relentlessly damp spring has coddled the plants into producing shallow roots (that will be the death of them once it stops raining) and the weeds are poised to overrun everything by August. It's hard to get excited about summer at the moment.

Many cats ago...

2010-05-25T22:27:00.000-07:00

More than 20 years ago, when I moved into the first Shady Rest, I brought with me from Greenwood a little black cat named RoyGBiv. A few years later, RoyGBiv got cancer and had to be put down. By that time, I had a big orange tabby named Bosco, a little Himalayan/Abyssinian named Betaille, and a gorgeous Russian blue named Sam. A lot of cats.

Mark Smythe was there when I put RoyGBiv down, and he helped me bury her in the back yard. After the burial, Mark drove back to Tacoma where he was in law school. He called me to report that when he arrived at his apartment building, he found a little back cat that looked much like RoyGBiv in the back alley, being menaced by some kids. Did I want the cat?

My answer was no. Sam's best friend, a little neglected neighborhood tabby named Socks, had already moved in and was in RoyGBiv's bed!

So Mark kept the black cat. He named her Melilot. She often stayed at the Shady Rest at Christmas when Mark would go back East to visit family. She liked going outdoors with our cats. One afternoon, when we got home from work, Melilot rushed up to

the porch to be let in and Zorg picked her up. Melilot didn't like that, and she batted him in the face with her little paws. She was declawed, so Zorg just laughed at her.

She leaned over and bit him on the nose.

Melilot lived most of her life in Mark's apartment in a urban part of Tacoma. She didn't get to go out much — but that might be why she lived to a very old age.

Two months ago, Mark called to say Melilot had been diagnosed with a fast-growing cancer of the jaw. Mark discovered some herbal remedies and managed to give Melilot another 10 weeks of life. He called today to say that she died last night.

Melilot, shown here on the mantelpiece at the Shady Rest, was a professional cat. She will be remembered.

Vision

2010-05-20T16:01:00.000-07:00

I've worn glasses since I was a tiny child. I think I'm better adjusted to my hard-to-correct eyesight that just about any of my friends with comparable myopia. I enjoyed wandering around the halls in high school without glasses because it taught me to recognize people by the way they stand, or move, rather than by facial characteristics. I often remove my glasses to think in a big-picture way.

I love wearing glasses!

But last night I had an experience with my eyes that was weird. I'd had only about five hours of sleep the night before, and had headed down to Olympia at six a.m. for a three-hour meeting that turned into a nine-hour work session. Then we'd driven back. I'd taken off my glasses, taken a bath, and then gone to check my email before bed.

It was one big blur. I switched to my computer glasses. I moved the computer monitor around. Nothing helped. It was as if I had been given drops at the eye doctor's office.

I tried a few things and decided it was just my right eye that was malfunctioning. There could be only two explanations: One, this was a reaction to being exhausted. Two, something was wrong with my eye and would need to be repaired.

I have annual eye exams, have never had any serious eye problems, and had certain not had any injury to the eye. There was no pain or irritation, and the eye looked, to the outside observer, just fine.

So I voted for "reaction to being exhausted," and went to bed.

Fortunately, I was right. I got up this morning and my vision was back to normal — which is to say, mostly correctable by the progressive-lens trifocals I wear.

Whew. Losing your vision is frightening. And, yes, I am going to have my eyes checked.

My life with things

2010-05-14T22:45:00.000-07:00

My mom's Oreck vacuum is schedule to depart the premises at 2 p.m. tomorrow. Yes, it's still all about things over here.

I got started cleaning the garage today and look forward resuming that tomorrow afternoon, the morning being devoted to going down to Seattle Center and training the volunteer greeters in advance of the Northwest Folklife Festival.

This week I was at last able to focus on work and catch up on most of it. I'm assisting three non-profits in collecting and writing client profiles, and working with two companies on articles and blog posts. There are two new projects on the horizon, one with an existing client and the other with a completely new one.

The website project in Olympia is just a few hours away from completion, but those hours involve meetings to Olympia, scheduled in the next two weeks.

The highlight of the week was the Campfire fundraising breakfast. Sherman Alexie spoke. If you have the chance to hear him in person, do it!

One unusual aspect of this week was that I went downtown three times in two days and had to wear business-type clothing. It wasn't too bad, but it was odd to come home and have to change in order to garden and do chores.

Laundry

2010-05-10T00:30:00.000-07:00

We got up at 4:30 this morning and took my mom to the airport where she flew first class back to Florida. She called me from the plane before they took off and sounded like she was having a wonderful time.

From the airport we went to West Seattle and picked up our share of the tables and leftovers from yesterday's Foolscap yard sale. When we got home, we switched to the other car, drove up to Sky, and bought stuff for the garden. Then it was over to Mae's to have breakfast with a friend of Tom's from the Bay Area who was in town for an English dance weekend. Then back home where we unloaded the plants from one car, a table from the other, and I took off for the storage locker to get more junk to leave at Goodwill along with the yard sale dregs. (We're talking a lot of junk — it filled my Honda Fit to the ceiling and filled two of the big wheeled carts at Goodwill.)

From there, it was over to the Naked Lady brunch and clothing exchange in Greenwood. (I left several bags of dresses and tops and got a gray Banana Republic cashmere cardigan.) Then back to the house were I went upstairs and...collapsed.

No idea how long I would have napped if I hadn't been woken up by phone calls every 15 minutes. The last was from the local teenager who mows the lawn; he was on his way over, and it seemed unlikely that I'd be able to sleep through that.

Tom was off in West Seattle picking up the top of our table from the yard sale location.

I got up and started doing laundry and sorting through stuff from my mom's move: about 100 towels, some — burnt orange — that I remember from the 1970s. As soon as Tom arrived and unloaded the table, I filled the car up with more bags to take to Goodwill.

He pointed out that I still needed to get some plants in to the garden. So I started gardening at 7 and finished at 9, interrupted only by the guy who came to buy the patio chaise I had advertised on Craig's List.

Still selling a nice Oreck vacuum — an upright that doesn't work for us because we don't have any carpets.

Anyone interested?

We're tired

2010-05-07T22:31:00.000-07:00

OK. We sold my mom's antique furniture, ran her yard sale, signed papers on her condo sale, cleaned the condo, and moved furniture and tools to storage. My mom moved in to our guest room Thursday, and today we sold her car. Sunday she flies back to Florida — which will now be her year-round home.

The friends, neighbors, and real estate agent who helped us out were great. The escrow people were unimpressive. Two sets of movers were involved, and one set (Adam's) was worth recommending.

Considering that nothing really serious was going on (no one was sick or anything), I was astonished at how much time and energy this whole project consumed.

I am officially out of the office

2010-04-19T23:09:00.000-07:00

I'm out of the office until April 28. My mom's flying in tomorrow night to pack/store/move/sell the contents of her condo in Edmonds. She's here for three weeks, but I expect most of the organizational stress will be the first week. So that's the one I'm taking off to do whatever it is that she'll construe as assistance.

What does "out of the office" mean? I'm not sure. Except "busy."

Gardening nirvana

2010-04-17T16:16:00.000-07:00

Not that any day I spend gardening could ever be less than wonderful, but...the garden is particularly gorgeous right now. The sky is gray, there are occasional sprinkles, but the temperature is so mild I can keep the back door open and the cats can race in and out of the house while I work. Some black clouds are overhead, so I shucked my boots and came in for a few minutes; I'm pretty sure we'll end with a nice sunset, so I can go out and clear the rest of the front side garden and put in the North Sky "ground cover" blueberry bushes.

I'm still putting a few pavers and lots of ground cover in the back yard surrounded the new vegetable garden. The plan is to get the actual vegetables in on May 9, after the whole packing/storing/moving/selling/ my mom's condo is over. I've hired a local mover and rented a storage locker, detailed my car, booked the cleaners, and scheduled a week off from work. My mom arrives Tuesday night.

She is really keyed up. This morning she woke me out of a sound sleep to ask me if I'd gotten the letter she sent to her attorney yesterday. Huh?

It turned out she meant the email she'd sent me telling me that she'd sent a letter to her attorney.

Back to sleep. Five minutes later, she called and woke me up again.

"There's something wrong with you, isn't there? You sounded very strange," she said, using her mother-knows-best tone.

I took the bait.

"Yes," I said. "I'm very upset. Someone keeps calling me on the phone and waking me out of the first decent night's sleep I've had all week. It's 8:00 a.m. out here, you know."

Of course, it was 11 a.m in Florida and she just can't quite believe that I'm allowed to sleep in while everyone in Florida has been up for hours.

As my dad used to say, "Oh boy."

Grand jete

2010-04-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

Tonight my friend John Hedtke was complaining on Facebook about the women in his house glued to the TV watching "America's Next Top Model." Many comments ensued.

It reminded me of the time, 45 years ago, that my father was complaining because my mother and I were glued to the TV watching Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn dancing Swan Lake on Ed Sullivan. (Sullivan was instrumental in using TV to bring fine arts to a vaudeville audience.)

We were rapt until we heard someone running through the kitchen. We turned just in time to see my father launch himself in a grand jete and come flying into the TV room.

Well, at least he wasn't wearing tights.

(You'll see Nureyev perform some grand jetes about 2/3 of way through this video.)

And it's only Tuesday...

2010-04-13T21:45:00.000-07:00

I got in touch with my prospective house guest who assures me she'll vouch for the extra person she's bringing along on her visit. I've tentatively upgraded her from freeloader to flake.

My Olympia website project is going into the lockdown phase, with the tasks getting increasing focused, smaller, and do-able. People are being forced to make decisions instead of ask for vague "improvements."

The timing is fortunate, because my mother arrives from Florida next Tuesday night to pack/sell/move/give away and otherwise deal with the contents of her Edmonds condo before the sale closes the first week of May. I'm taking April 21-27 off from work to be available for all of this. Many tasks she envisions taking days can be accomplished in a few minutes, so I think the first week will be the most important to work with her.

We've also scheduled a garage sale, at her condo garage, April 30 and May 1. Stay tuned.

Miffed manners

2010-04-12T22:40:00.001-07:00

When someone asks me something I would never in a thousand years ask someone else, I just can't imagine where they're coming from. It puts me off balance, and I tend to stand there with a deer-in-the-headlights expression.

That's how I got run over today by a woman I don't know and now don't look forward to meeting.

Jennifer (we'll call her) is a friend of a good friend of mine. She lives in Olympia. She's coming to town to attend a conference in two weeks, and it was suggested that she stay at my house. I've heard a lot about her, and always wanted to meet her, so this seemed a great way to get acquainted.

It was only after we'd agreed on the dates of her visit that Jennifer mentioned she'd be bringing a woman colleague with her. Oh. Well, no problem I said. I have a fold-out sofa bed and a small futon.

Then this afternoon Jennifer called to ask if she and the other woman could bring along a fellow they'd met at an arts event who is also going to the conference.

Wait a second. This woman I've never met has just invited a man she barely knows to come live at my house for three days?

Unfortunately, she called with this request just as I was headed out the door to a meeting. It wasn't a good time to talk, and I stupidly tried to head her off with logistics. "Gee, I don't really have room..." I said.

She responded, "Oh, we'll tell him to bring a sleeping bag."

It took about three hours for me to I realize how completely pissed off I am about this. Sure, he could be a perfectly nice guy. He could also be someone who is going to steal my computer or molest my neighbors' kids. I have no idea, and neither does Jennifer.

I called our mutual friend, who was clearly unhappy to hear about this situation. She thinks Jennifer is a real sweet person, but I think Jennifer's one nervy freeloader. And I expressed that opinion. So much for wanting to meet her.

Tomorrow I'm calling Ms. Hospitality and asking her how well she knows this guy, and if she's willing to vouch for him. If she's not, he's uninvited.

And as for her...sheesh. Get some class.

A letter from the IRS

2010-04-02T10:13:00.001-07:00

Thursday I opened up the Foolscap table at Norwescon. Be sure to stop by and visit!

I'd never been to Norwescon before. Just meeting people in the registration line was a kick. I was entertained by Dr. Oliver David Cross, who talked of opening a tea shop north of Seattle. It looks to be a fascinating weekend — but watch out for the spears. Unlike many large science fiction and fantasy conventions, Norwescon allows weaponry in the public spaces. It's part of costumes, of course, but still not something you want to run into.

I came home to find I had a letter from the IRS. Unlike their previous letters, which insisted I'd underpaid my quarterly estimated taxes, this one notified me that the issue had been resolved and they apologized for any concern this had caused. Whew!

It's not every day you get an apology from the IRS. I took a bath and went to bed early.

Vital signs

2010-03-31T23:13:00.000-07:00

In the past 72 hours I have written:
• 1 case study on cardiac rehabilitation data management software
• 1 blog post on conscious sedation in dental offices
• 1 blog post on state laws regarding AEDs in dental offices
• 1 grant proposal to the Australia Arts Council (which included converting a three-page budget spreadsheet into AU dollars)
• 1 newsletter article on "housing first" programs for chronically homeless individuals in Seattle
• 1 newsletter article on fundraising projects for a writing program
• a series of emails exhorting people to volunteer for a marketing project

During the same period I've edited:
• several web pages about traffic safety projects
• a magazine article on making money as an entrepreneur

And I agreed to:
• write a case study on defibrillators
• edit a how-to book for music teachers
• create a series of client profiles for two social service agencies
• read and critique five fiction manuscripts

I turned down a request to write a press release, and I totally blew the deadline for a second case study on medical devices.

While all of this was going on, the Reglaze window contractors came and removed all five of the ancient double-hung dining room windows and replaced them with insulated windows, two of which are casement windows with screens.

Is it summer yet?

Four perfect hours

2010-03-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

I love to garden. This afternoon the weather in Seattle was perfect for gardening. Not just nice, or pleasant, but perfect. It was neither hot nor cool, and there wasn't any breeze.

I laid out the 6' x 11' oval potager garden, its plastic edging, installed two 72" iron obelisks from Sky Nursery, put in a soaker hose, and lugged three bales of compost into the oval (to be opened and dug in next week). I also got two blueberry bushes planted in other areas of the garden. (The plan is to put in another four or five blueberries this year, but only if I can find the "Sunshine" variety that tastes like wild berries.)

The cats were out in the garden with me much of the day — Sheba dashing around on Paul and Gwen's roof, Mabel visiting all the neighbors, and Kaylee and Zoe chasing each other around in the rhodies. The kids across the street had on shorts and bathing suits and were spraying each other with squirt guns.

At 6 p.m. it was still in the high 60s, and sunlight was pouring through the grape arbor and onto the patio.

People always think of the best days of life as being the days when you get married, or win awards, or something like that. My best days are like this one.

Alex Chilton

2010-03-18T23:22:00.000-07:00

Alex Chilton died Wednesday.

In 2004, when I was with the iTunes Music Store, one of the consultant DJs assembled a playlist called "one-hit wonders." I was assigned to write a blurb about it. I disagreed with some of the artists placed on this list, including Alex Chilton (for, of course, "The Letter").

The more research I did on Chilton and his post-Box Tops work with Big Star, the more fascinated I became.

A few months later, I flew to Euless, Texas, to see him make a rare appearance at the Euless Arbor Daze Festival. The festival was held in an open field filled with crafts booths, barbecue stands, and an area roped off for an evening concert of old rock and roll.

The oldies lineup included Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs and Chilton with the Box Tops. Chilton's voice was not in top form that night, but he seemed to be enjoying himself in his ironic way. I talked my way backstage after the set and got his autograph.

About 20 minutes later, a spectacular thunderstorm swept in across the plains, shutting down the rest of the evening. The parking area turned to a mudbath. I somehow got my rental car out of there and across the highway to a Denny's (next to my budget hotel). As I walked in, a fellow at a booth waved me over -- a Nashville sessions musician who was the keyboard player in the version of the "Box Tops" that had been put together for the gig. He'd seen me backstage, getting Chilton's autograph, and was curious — as I don't exactly look like a groupie.

We sat and talked for an hour or so -- mostly about the industry, but also about Chilton. A brilliant songwriter, but not an easy fellow to work with, it seemed.

Turned out the band was staying at the same hotel I was, so I gave the keyboardist a lift back in my car. It was only a block, but the whole area was knee-deep in water. I remember that it stormed relentlessly all night — pretty terrifying. The next day the weather cleared, and that night I drove to Dallas and went to Brave Combo's 25th Anniversary at Sons of Hermann Hall in Deep Ellum.

It was a weird trip — but I'm very glad I got to hear Alex Chilton live.

Gardening and taxes

2010-03-16T23:04:00.000-07:00

After all the excitement of Potlatch, I wasn't really looking forward to another busy weekend.

But I'd set aside March 12-14 to dig up the back yard, and I was determined to stick with it. There just wasn't another weekend on the calendar that was open, and I knew if I waited into April to dig, there wouldn't be time to get most things planted.

I started to worry when Friday was rainy and cold. Then the truck scheduled to bring over the huge dumpster from the Dirt Exchange broke down. But they found another truck, and by 5 p.m. an enormous shiny orange dumpster was sitting in front of the house.

Unfortunately, Tom was now stricken with the miserable cold I'd had at Potlatch. After work, I went out into the back yard with a hand truck and removed a dozen heavy concrete pavers. I hacked at some bamboo. And I went to bed wondering if anyone would brave the predicted rain to help me dig sod during the weekend.

I went out to get bagels Saturday morning and came back to find Bob had arrived and was ready to dig. He and I got going, and after a while Carrie showed up. Bob left to go to Portland, and Carrie and I dug until lunchtime, by which time Nina showed up. Everyone had lunch, and then Nina and I started shoveling. By 3 p.m., half of the sod was in the dumpster!

However, I then collapsed like a wet noodle. All I remember of dinner was Ibuprofen, and I was in bed by 6 p.m.

Sunday morning Tom was miraculously recovered. Hank showed up, ready to dig, and our neighbor Jerry came over. Hank grew up on a farm, and he really knows how to chop sod! Tom took over wheel barrow duty, shuttling the sod to the dumpster. By the time Janice and John showed up, they were just in time to level the lumpy dirt and help me lug a lot of bamboo out and throw that on top of the dumpster load.

And the weather was fabulous for both days!

I was so grateful to my friends. I calculated that if I'd done that project myself, it would have taken several weekends — plus we'd have had a driveway full of mud and sod all spring.

Now I can hardly wait to get out there and plant the potager garden. The garden is going to have peas, pole beans, and bush beans — including fresh string beans and scarlet runner beans that I like to dry and use in soups and pasta sauces all winter. Apparently potager gardens are supposed to be ringed with flowers and short herbs; so I'm studying up on that.

This work-week is supposed to be focused on client projects and taxes. The taxes got off to a great start tonight when I discovered a whopping error on one of the 1099s from a client. Unfortunately, they didn't really pay me $90,000.

If only.

I can has sympathy?

2010-03-07T23:34:00.000-08:00

There's not much to LOL about it: By the time I figured out why my arm felt strange, it was 2 a.m. I drove to Group Health urgent care on Capitol Hill, skirmished with a dozen Goths toting beer out of the Safeway, and eventually convinced the doctor on duty that the little burning bumps on the inside of my right elbow were, indeed, an outbreak of shingles. Fortunately, my Group Health medical record showed that I get shingles on weird dermatomes (like my right knee). They gave me medicine, I took it, and was home and in bed by 4 a.m.

Between the middle of the night adventures and my cold, I was a real zombie at Potlatch this morning. I was surprised that I had to keep saying "you don't want to get to close to me" to people. I felt like all they had to do was look at me and they wouldn't want to get anywhere near me!

However, it was worth going to the convention. I got to hear Eileen Gunn read a hysterically funny story (a collaboration with Michael Swanwick) about an inept time traveler, and saw David Levine's presentation on his two weeks in a Mars exploration simulation in Arizona.

By 3 p.m., I was ready to come home and just -- oh, wait, there was a meeting for the bid committee for the 2011 Discworld convention in the living room at 4 p.m. When that wound up, it was time to sit down and write a blog post that a client needs for tomorrow.

I did manage to do a little more work on the rewrite of my story, "Four Lakes," that got critiqued on Friday. The critiques were clear and helpful and it's a much better story now. I'm going to let it cool for a couple of weeks before sending it for a second round of comments. If it makes it past that hurdle, it might become the first story I've ever submitted for publication.

Hallucinations are real

2010-03-06T16:28:00.000-08:00

In form, if not in content.

I know. I had them all morning.

Yesterday I got up at the crack of dawn to send out emails for a work project, worked all morning, and then rushed off the the writer's workshop at Potlatch 19, which included critiques of my story "Day 26: Four Lakes."

From the four-hour critique session I went to a two-hour board meeting for the Clarion West Board, followed by dinner with an upset friend, followed by Clarion West's public board meeting at which I was formally named to the board.

Then the board hosted a party for the Potlatch folks, who are major fundraisers and supporters for the Clarion West writing program. I think we stayed 45 minutes at the party. I don't remember much after that.

I'd been coming down with a sore throat all day, and by the time I went to bed I had a fever and so much congestion in my head that I was hallucinating. My memories of this morning include trying to rewrite the story in my head (based on the critiques), trying to write new stories, and then getting into a bath and apparently falling asleep in the tub. When I woke up , I felt less ditzy and the water was cold.

I wanted desperately to go back to Potlatch this afternoon to see Tom do the Trivia Contest, go to the auction, and help my Foolscap concom host a party at the hospitality suite after the auction tonight. But instead I had Tom stop at the store, get a tray of stuffed grape leaves, and take that for the party on my behalf.

I'm going back to bed.

Announcing a two-day yard party (March 13-14)

2010-03-04T18:25:00.000-08:00

You're invited to a yard party!

A yard party is nothing like a garden party, I'm afraid.

Instead of sitting around in fancy togs admiring the roses, you bring a shovel and spend 30 minutes helping us remove the sod from the back yard. Come any time between 9 and 5 on Saturday or Sunday, March 13 and 14. (We will also be doing some prep work on Friday afternoon, if that fits your schedule better.)

There'll be refreshments, including bagels and cream cheese (in the morning) and Italian sandwiches or pizza (in the afternoon).

We have no idea how many days, or how many people, this is going to take, but we're focusing on Saturday and Sunday to remove sod from an area approximately 14 x 16 feet. The idea is that everyone puts in a very short stint of shoveling so no one gets worn out or injured. (I'm still suffering wrist problems from my five-hour pitched battle with an ancient rhododendron seven years ago; it was completely my fault — I just didn't know when to stop.)

We'll have a "dirt dumpster" from the Dirt Exchange in front of the house which we will fill with the sod (they'll lug it away on Monday).

Once the sod is removed, I'll level the yard. Then the center of the yard (about 5 x 9 feet) will get dug up to be an oval potager garden. I'll set some pavers on gravel around the garden bed, and finish everything else off with hardy ground cover.

What's in it for you? In August, you'll be invited back for a real garden party — the kind with fancy clothes and fancy food — ideally, featuring some of the produce from the new garden.

New England in Florida

2010-03-04T18:03:00.001-08:00

So many people in Florida are originally from New England that there is a genre of eateries devoted to New England seafood.

In Naples, Florida, the foremost among these is the Swan River Fish Market. It's named after the Swan River Fish Market on Cape Cod. That's where we got much of our seafood when I was growing up. My mother and I went to the Naples outpost of Swan River last week and had lobster. It was not as good as the lobster I had a few years back at Legal Seafood in Boston, but it was good.

I'm now back in Seattle, and my mom wrote to say that someone in Naples has opened a restaurant that serves Ipswich clams. These are the clams used for New England fried clams.

I have a great fried clam batter recipe that I've tried on Northwest clams. I keep meaning to order a quart of fresh-shucked Ipswich clams from Digger's Seafood (they ship overnight) and cook real fried clams. Is any one interested in sharing these? Let me know.

3 cheers for the Better Business Bureau (and Angie's List)

2010-02-15T13:27:00.000-08:00

I recently hired a contractor to do $5,000 worth of window work on my house. As is my practice, I got three bids. The first two were from local contractors who'd done some nice work on neighbors' homes. The third bid was from a window company that does its own installation.

The two contractors both planned to use Marvin double-hung windows, which they would order through a local window dealer with whom I'd had a horrific experience two years ago: repeated delays, mistakes in the order, and surly customer service, to boot.

After talking with the two contractors, I joined Angie's List and looked up their top-rated window contractor for North Seattle. I called this contractor, who came over and proposed using two Milgard casement windows along with three non-opening windows from a local company that does commercial buildings. As window specialists, they knew a huge amount about types of windows, insulation, wear, and weather.

With a small Angie's List discount, their bid came to about 15% under the contractors.

But, before hiring them, I went to the Better Business Bureau website to check on them. Their rating was: A+. Reassuring, but I've always figured that the BBB adhered to an "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" policy. On previous instances when I've checked a company through the BBB, the website has said things like "This business is not a BBB Accredited Business" and "This business is not currently rated. BBB does not have sufficient information to issue a rating for this business."

Just for the heck of it, I looked up the window dealer with whom I'd had such a miserable experience in the past. To my surprise, they have a BBB rating, and (not so much to my surprise) that rating is "F."

Very interesting. I wonder if the two contractors know about this! It certainly cost them my business.

By the way, the folks I hired, based on Angie's List and BBB ratings, are Reglaze Unlimited.

Where's the cat?

2010-02-11T23:11:00.000-08:00

Last week I avoided writing about Garibaldi the feral cat. He disappeared for seven days, and I was worried. But he showed up Sunday, yawning, at the back door. And looking perfectly well fed. He ate with us Sunday and Monday, and now is apparently on the road again.

So, the missing cat I'm writing about is not one of ours. He belongs to our friends Gayle and Jerry. The cat is a black Maine Coon, and he's been extremely sick with a puzzling intestinal illness for some months now. Occasionally, when he's in exceptionally bad shape, we go over during the day to check on him and report to Jerry, who works on the Eastside.

The cat's been near death several times, and this weekend he took a turn for the worse. Yesterday we were part of a team of folks checking on him during the day. When we arrived, he was laying on the floor on a towel, eyes glazed, and barely moving. I was pretty sure it was the end.

I was surprised when Jerry called this morning and asked if we'd check on the cat at noon. I was even more surprised when we went over there at noon, and the cat was gone.

We looked under beds, behind bookcases, in closets, and under furniture. We called Jerry, and he told us about a couple of other hiding places. No cat. We went home, got a flash light, and did a second search. We even went outdoors and asked the workmen on the house next door. No cat.

Jerry came home a few hours later, and called to report that he'd found the cat, laying on a desk in the guest room amidst piles of books at papers. Jerry had walked right past the cat, twice, before he spotted him.

We were relieved. If the cat was able to hop up on a desk, perhaps he's once again on the road to recovery.

And I can hardly wait until GPS pet technology is affordable for cats.

Too much

2010-01-26T11:36:00.000-08:00

I'm overcommitted, and I hate what it does to me. I'm making deadlines, but missing birthdays. People talk to me and I can't hear them because there are already a dozen other voices talking in my head, each one a monologue about a particular project.

To make it worse, the first four weeks of this month have been filled with deaths and illnesses in my social circle. Illness that involve things like chemotherapy, radiation, and amputations. Things that make you look at your plate and wonder about additives and cholesterol. Things that make me sure I get my butt over to BF Day for least two of Susan Powter's workouts every week. Last week I made it to three, which meant my days looked like: shower, work, workout, work, bath, sleep (repeat).

This past weekend some social events, arranged weeks ago, required making sandwiches. After slicing two of my fingers, I ended up making sandwiches while wearing bandages and gloves. The cuts are ugly, but not serious, since I can still put enough weight on my hands to do yoga and the bandages can be peeled back far enough so that I can use my fingertips to type. But I've managed to duck any further cooking or dishwashing activities.

This week looks to be even more pathetic, with multiple trips to Olympia for early morning meetings. Apologies to everyone, in advance.

I'm reminded of my mother, who ran a schedule like this for years on end. She not only managed to keep up with everything, she frequently got ahead of herself.

One day she drove her usual hour-and-a-half commute from Cape Cod to work at the Boston statehouse, worked all morning, and the walked to her elderly parents' apartment to clean and make lunch for them. She was in such a hurry to get back to work that when the elevator arrived on 7th floor of the apartment building, she dashed in and opened her umbrella — scaring several people.

Fortunately for everyone, I don't carry an umbrella.

Explaining Massachusetts to the West Coast

2010-01-19T21:04:00.000-08:00

The liberal state of Massachusetts went and elected a Republican senator. How did this happen? Let me explain.

"Liberal" in Massachusetts is not like "liberal" in Seattle. It's working class liberal — people who believe in the right to organize, fair pay, job protection, free speech. But they don't really like seeing women get too much power — the gals should be home raising 10 kids.

And the working class liberals just can't resist handsome young male candidates — particularly ones who look like the local Irish attorney for the labor union. So they picked Scott Brown — someone who looks like a young Ted Kennedy even if he doesn't think like one.

Oh, where is George V. Higgins when we need him?

Now don't go and get all complicated about this one. That is so...West Coast.

Jump

2010-01-10T19:23:00.000-08:00

This month, and next month, are extremely busy for my business, as a result of the commuting involved in my Olympia project. On Sunday night I feel like I'm about to jump out of an airplane and am wondering if I packed the parachute correctly.

I plan to dial things back in March and April.

This weekend had too much going on. I was very happy today to finally get an hour out in the garden. It's going to be a great gardening season. The early winter cold killed off last year's foliage, so it's easy to clear the way for all of the wonderful things that are already coming up (wood iris and crocuses) for spring. I am determined to get rid of plants that just aren't right for the space (a two-foot high pieris japonica that isn't happy in the front yard, and a rather lovely espaliered camellia (three feet high, deep pink) that just doesn't belong next to the house. If you are interested in either shrub, please let me know.

My other gardening ambitions are:
• Get the spring rituals figured out for the columnar apple tree (spraying with mysterious environmentally correct oils or some such)
• Do something about the lousy grass in the small but lumpy and difficult-to-mow back yard. I suspect I'm headed toward a grass-free back yard, with winding pathways of inexpensive embossed concrete (where the stepping stones now are) and ground covers and ornamental grasses (where the grass now is). The one thing I do not want anywhere is gravel, which seems to be an invitation for weeds to dive in and take over.
• Remove all of the invasive Cricklewood hardy geraniums from the garden. They look great and grow fast in the spring, with fabulous bright pink blossoms, but turn mildewed in midsummer. I could deal with this if they stayed one size and in one place, but they tend to push aside other plants, creating a big sea of mildewed leaves.
• Move Tom's giant planter out to the driveway, and use it to replace the mid-size planters that currently look like clutter. I saw a pretty wonderful planter of evergreen foliage in front of Habitude in Fremont this week (see photo) and I think I'm going to try to recreate that.
• Plant more blueberry bushes. Everywhere.

A look back at the year 2000

2009-12-31T16:52:00.000-08:00

(With thanks to David Levine, who wrote on this topic in Facebook)

Excerpts from my holiday letter from 10 years ago:

...After two years as managing editor of Northwest Health magazine, I have begun a job-share arrangement with another senior editor so that I can spend two days a week writing book reviews for JanuaryMagazine.com and working on a mystery reader's travel guide to the Pacific Northwest. If all goes well, you’ll be able to buy the book on Amazon.com in 2001.

(Within three months, this arrangement led not to a book but to a new job with Apple, writing website reviews for iReview.)

1999 was a good year for visitors from out of state: My cousin Carol and her son Michael were here this summer (Michael was doing an internship at Microsoft on his way to U.C. Berkeley for grad school).

(Michael, after a stint in high tech, now has an MBA and is involved in politics and socially responsible businesses.)

...our friend Bob, a computer programmer and country dance caller from England, stayed with us for the Northwest Folklife Festival in May on his way to a new job in Australia. Two weeks later he was back from Australia, having left the new job to return to Seattle and pursue a romance with Laura, a wonderful woman he had met at Folklife!

(Bob and Laura are now married; I later moved to Ballard, and they are neighbors.)

My parents spent much of this year’s visit to Seattle looking at condominiums. They plan to shift their summer residence from Cape Cod to Edmonds, Washington—a beautiful town on Puget Sound, about 20 minutes north of Seattle. Winters will still find them in Naples, Florida.

(My father has since died, and now my mother has the Edmonds condo they purchased up for sale; she's planning on moving to a retirement community in Naples.)

The big-hearted lynxpoint Siamese, Solomon, died very suddenly of cancer in September. Solomon had made many friends up and down the block, and now it is not uncommon to find a neighbor standing on the sidewalk in front of the house, gazing at his resting place in the garden. They’ll explain “I’m talking to Solomon.” The four remaining cats (Bosco, Betaille, Sam, and Socks) are not among Sol’s mourners—nor are they out recruiting a replacement.

(Sadly, none of those remaining cats are left. Sam was hit by a car (which precipitated the move to a very quiet street in Ballard); Bosco died of cancer; Socks died after the move to Ballard in a rare complication after dental surgery; and Betaille went out, of old age and cancer, three years ago. Sheba, who joined the household nine years ago, is the only cat left from the Wallingford era.)

Today was just funny

2009-12-29T23:56:00.000-08:00

I've been editing all evening — a rambling, poorly organized "how-to" article that goes on, and on, and on in excruciating detail. When I got to a bullet point (the eighth or ninth in a long, pontificating series) that said:

Be concise. People don't want to ready anything that's more than a page long.

I laughed so hard I fell out of my chair.

It's been that kind of day.

Still laughing

2009-12-29T19:12:00.001-08:00

Thanks to a Facebook note from Doug Plummer, I'm still laughing. This time it's a Garrison Keillor column on the Republicans and healthcare.

Why I'm a cat owner

2009-12-29T19:04:00.000-08:00

Maybe it was my recent dog-sitting experience, but I've been sitting here for the past hour chuckling over this story in the Seattle Times. I can only wonder what the cats, mentioned in the story, thought about the situation.

The new MacBook Pro

2009-12-27T00:10:00.001-08:00

I am in the midst of setting up my MacBook Pro (13") which replaces my four-year-old 12" Titanium PowerBook. The Titanium had pretty much recovered from The Cat Pee incident, but it wasn't able to run Snow Leopard. As I'm now commuting to Olympia, I needed a reliable laptop, and I want to be able to use Snow Leopard's "Back to My Mac" feature to access the iMac at home.

First impressions:

The new environmentally aware packaging is pretty elegant for cardboard. It was nice not to wrassle with a lot of plastic wrapping.
I like the magnetic power cord (not new on MacBooks, but new for me).
I love the backlit keyboard (again, not new for MacBooks, but new for me — I remember when this was just for the highest-end models).
Choosing an account photo made me smile — I recognized several of the images (flowers) from the early iCards galleries I worked with.
The screen seems wide, but not very tall.
The new track pad with one, two, three and four-finger controls looks intriguing.
I noticed that I will have been a member of .Mac (Mobile Me) for 10 years come Valentine's Day.
The set-up, including settings and a complete sync of mail, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, via Mobile Me was complete 30 minutes from when I opened the shipping box.

All that remains is to install Microsoft Office, iWork '09, Yojimbo (which syncs), and Storyist.

Tomorrow.

Happy Holidays

2009-12-23T22:31:00.000-08:00

Tonight the energy shifted from pre-holiday frenzy to actually enjoying the season.

I got out today and went up to Swanson's Nursery to spend my holiday "Swan Dollars" on some white pansies for the doorstep planter.

There is a camel at Swanson's Nursery. He seems very friendly, and is sharing his yard with shaggy burro (see photo of snorgling). There are also two magnificently antlered reindeer, who were busy attacking two Christmas trees suspended from the rafters. For that purpose.

I stopped by the new gourmet shop on Market Street in Ballard, Savour, and discovered the cheesemonger there is an old friend from Brie and Bordeaux (the cheese shop in the old Meridian neighborhood in Wallingford/Green Lake).

Savour has cheeses, Spanish ham, olives, and things you can't get anywhere else in town (except Pike Place Market). It's expensive. It's worth it. And they have gift certificates, one of which I bought for a friend.

Finally, I swung by Classic Consignment and got a beautiful Banana Republic A-line wool skirt for work ($18.99). I'm going to be working in Olympia two or three days a week in January and need "real" clothes.

Broken promise

2009-12-16T18:39:00.000-08:00

Discouraging news for pet owners: Pet Promise cat food, a nutritious line developed under the supervision of Dr. Andrew Weil, is no longer available. According to the website, making and distributing pet food made from organic meats, and selling it at reasonable prices in supermarkets, didn't make enough money for the company.

So, there you have it. I'm back to the choice of crappy food I can afford and can pick up while doing my regular grocery shopping, or jaw-droppingly expensive organic food (well, the sanctimonious sales people insist it's organic) that I have to traipse off to special pet products stores to purchase.

Actually, I split the difference. The only wet cat food the cats will eat is Fancy Feast (definitely the Bad Commercial stuff) but I can get them to eat various types of premium or organic dry foods. The wet food is important for Garibaldi, the feral cat, because feral cats often don't have adequate access to water in the dry months.

Mabel, the new house cat, loves Pet Promise Healthy Weight forumula, as does Sheba the deaf white cat. Their last bowls of it are nearly gone. I've been scouring the area stores for it. If you see it, please let me know.

And tomorrow is Friday!

2009-12-10T23:00:00.000-08:00

The week started out with a nasty email and floundered along until this morning when, at last, the karmic sun began to shine.

My new MacBook Pro arrived and is ready to be unpacked this weekend. It will replace the 12" PowerBook G4 that has been a little unpredictable after Kaylee the tabby peed on it and I poured odor neutralizer over the keyboard. I plan to keep it around as a loaner machine for people who just need to get webmail.

Garibaldi the feral cat, last seen on the heated outdoor cat bed Monday night, has reappeared again, demanding food. I think a neighbor who feeds several of the local ferals may have locked a bunch of them in his garage at night to keep them from freezing during the cold spell.

Two difficult writing projects got past road blocks today, and I made an amazing find on eBay — an item that perfectly matches a Company Store item I purchased three years ago, one that is no longer carried by the company store.

Everything I've ordered for Christmas gifts has arrived, so all that's left to fuss over is Christmas cookies (gingerbread this year) and shipping.

We've been invited to three parties this Saturday night, and are trying to figure out which ones to attend when. (A dance friend's annual white elephant Christmas/Hanukkah gift exchange is a must, but the neighbors' evening event is renowned for delicious seafood. Hmmm.) Other than that, our holiday calendar is relatively low key. There's nothing corporate, so I can wear steampunk fashion: lace, velvet, and boots!

The two nodding lawn reindeer we picked up at a church rummage sale this summer are already set up and entertaining the neighbors' kids, and I brought several boxes of Christmas decorations over from the storage locker this morning. It turns out to be a very odd mix of stuff, and much of it will be listed on Freecycle this weekend.

As for a tree, we'll get that next weekend at the Top Banana tree stand. They were nice enough to let me leave my car there over night last week after the tire exploded.

Yes, it's been like that recently. And today I couldn't get the garage door (one of two large swinging doors) to open. That's because the wet ground under the driveway froze, expanded, and raised the asphalt up nearly an inch. (In New England, this is a called a "frost heave.") The door can no longer swing out over the asphalt. Fortunately, I don't keep the car in the garage, so this does not constitute an emergency. Frost heaves rarely resolve when the ground thaws; I suspect this will require taking the large door off the hinges and planing the bottom a good half inch.

But I think, for a while, I'll just ignore it and go out the back door.

More dog and cats

2009-11-28T23:21:00.001-08:00

The dog is at a lovely farm-like setting with friends for a few days.

The cats are glad he's gone. Our feral feline, Mr. Garibaldi, is back on the back porch twice a day, and I'm preparing a heated, insulated bed for him in the outside basement area — even though last year he rejected the heated bed and insisted on sleeping in the unheated one.

Meanwhile, a friend reminds me that you can click a link on this page to to donate food to the Petfinder.com-affiliated Animal Rescue Site. If you click once a day, it provides the value of .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. And you'll find a link to Jacquie Lawson's card site.

Oh, dog

2009-11-24T02:16:00.000-08:00

Five cats I've dealt with before -- but five cats and a dog?

A friend of ours adopted a rescued dog a few months ago, only to discover that the dog -- a sweet, not-very-bright, large spaniel, six or seven years old -- had been neglected and was both needy and untrained. Our friend hasn't had the time or resources to train the dog to signal her when it wants to go out.

I thought this was her problem, until she had to go out of town for a week and we found ourselves with the dog. And there's simply no choice but to train it.

So, every three or four hours we take the dog out for a walk. The system is working well. The dog is happy. The house has not suffered.

As for me, I just got up at 2 a.m. to take it out in the back yard, and I have mixed feelings about this schedule.

To complicate matters, the dog is arthritic. Taking it out into the enclosed back yard means getting it up the basement stairs -- and tonight it slid all the way back down, with a terrible clatter. I have thick blankets and quilts for it in a few rooms. The dog likes to paw them into heaps before flopping down on them.

I am trying to figure out how anyone with a dog has time to do anything but walk the dog, feed the dog, and clean up what the dog has drooled on.

The dog, fortunately, barely notices the cats (four indoor, one outdoor semi-feral). The cats, for their part, seem utterly incredulous that there is a dog in the house.

I'm on the side of the cats.

A week of "suspicious activity"

2009-11-20T17:45:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Citibank, I had to make four separate phone calls this week to insist that four routine charges on two of my credit cards were not "unusual activity." The charges were in the $20 range, and the merchants involved were major online companies. For each purchase, Citibank left two messages on my cell phone, three minutes apart. Of course, you can't hit "reply" — you have to key in a completely separate number, your ZIP code, and a special access code (that you had to write down from their message).

For the first incident, I called the number on the card itself and wended my way through the system to a live person. Why, I asked, was a renewal of my Classmates.com membership ($20) considered suspicious? The answer: "It's a very large company and criminals are likely to make purchases from large companies."

So the criminal sets up a Classmates.com account with their purloined credit card number. Wouldn't that, er, be kind of traceable? Never mind.

At this rate, it's soon going to be faster just to drive to the mall and wander around buying things the old-fashioned way. Or perhaps I should pay for all online purchases via PayPal — as far as I know, those payments don't have to be defended.

In which much is resolved

2009-11-19T01:00:00.001-08:00

The job at the Big Company in California was not, as I suspected, a good match for me. But I enjoyed the four rounds of interviewing.

Meanwhile, I'm a finalist for a three-month contract with an Olympia web strategy firm. If I get it, I'd be writing a large, complex website for a state agency. I find myself highly enthusiastic about the firm's approach, and think I could learn quite a bit from working with them.

Unfortunately, commuting would be a pain. I thought "No problem! Amtrak to Olympia!" But it turns out that the 7:30 a.m. Amtrak from Seattle doesn't actually go to Olympia...it stops in Lacey, where the only option for getting to Olympia (a mere 5 miles) is a meandering local bus route that takes 50 minutes!

I find this mind boggling. Surely there must be hundreds of Seattle-to-Olympia commuters who would switch from car to the train—if only someone ran a morning shuttle from the Lacey station to the state capitol.

What happened?

2009-11-03T19:30:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons I write about conventions and conferences while they're going on is because I know by now that I won't get around to writing about them when I get home.

Instead, I'll grapple with piles of laundry, try to catch up on sleep and exercise, and deal with the emails, messages, and work missed while traveling.

Tonight, instead of reflecting back on the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, I'm dismantling the refrigerator, washing all the shelves, and throwing out lots of jars of jams, jellies, chutneys, relishes and olives whose origins are lost in the mists of time. Anyone who really wants to hear about the convention should come on over. And bring rubber gloves and baking soda.

Halloween at World Fantasy

2009-10-31T12:53:00.000-07:00

Most science fiction conventions involve massive numbers of fans honoring a few professionals in the field, but World Fantasy is different. It's all about the professionals (writers, publishers, agents, reviewers, book dealers) doing business with each other while a smaller group of (mostly local) fans runs the logistics and looks on respectfully.

So forget the convention stereotype of Star Trek fans stomping around dressed as Klingons, or furries in full fox suits...the look here is definitely chinos and t-shirts for most, with black jeans and black t-shirts for the urban noir contingent. It turns out that the governing board even prevented one of the book dealers from displaying their steampunk hats — the three jewelry dealers (two high-end, one not-so-high-end) apparently got in as fantasy-themed artwork and are doing a brisk business in steampunk-related items.

However, with the convention coinciding with Halloween this year, the unwritten "no costumes" rule is tough to enforce, even with raised eyebrows and management disapproval. As the day goes on, more and more witches and wizards are turning up in the elevators. In fact, they've got one running Ops.

World Fantasy Convention initial impressions

2009-10-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

Arrived in San Jose late last night and discovered I'd forgotten my decorative stuff (jewelry, makeup, steampunk hat). The Scholarly Gentleman had already set up the shop in the dealers' room and wanted to take me to a party to meet famous and about-to-be-famous writers and editors.

I met one extremely famous writer in the elevator and chatted just a bit about his books set in Tibet and Nepal. After a fairly exhausting hour at a huge party that stretched on for several rooms in the Fairmont, I concluded that the older a famous writer is, the friendlier he or she will be.

I'm working on my own projects in the hotel room (no power outlet within 15 feet of the desk; marble desktop that doesn't work with a mouse, exorbitant wi-fi charge) in between running down to the dealers' room to help out the Scholarly Gentleman. Tomorrow I'm going to help out Sarah in Ops.

Steamcon I: Hold on to your hat!

2009-10-25T23:01:00.000-07:00

The first SteamCon event, in SeaTac this weekend, was a resounding success by just about any measure. Having planned for 600 attendees, they managed to accommodate 1200 before closing off memberships.

The panels were great, and the Sea-Tac Marriott hotel couldn't have been friendlier. The place was packed with elaborately costumed Steampunkers have a whale of a time. I heard there was even one fellow who wore a vintage bathing suit into the pool.

I had other commitments Friday and Saturday, but I went down with Hank early Sunday morning and took in the art show, the vendors room (packed to the gills with hats, corsets, goggles, and enthusiastic shoppers), and a superb presentation by pro-Steampunk author Tim Powers. I came away from hearing Powers thoroughly inspired, with a reading list and two ideas for short stories. Hank took several dozen photos, which I'm hoping he'll soon post on Flickr (account: dionwrbear). The Flickr Steamcon photo pool is here.

Unfortunately, I didn't wear a Steampunk outfit Sunday morning. There just wasn't time to figure out what went with what! But once at the convention, I did manage to purchase the costume element I've been missing: high-quality goggles -- brass and leather. Inspired by the goggles, and the costumes I'd just studied, I went home and put together a really smashing desert-style Steampunk getup (black vest, sage skirt, and cranberry blouse and hat with brass and leather trimmings) that I plan to take with me to...the next convention I'm attending. Which is sooner that I'd like to think.

The SteamCon folks will be doing it again next year, same place. Watch their site for registration info.

Cranky. Swamped.

2009-10-19T22:27:00.000-07:00

There's this list stuff to do around the house — projects that take a whole day, or at least five hours of uninterrupted focus. Very little on the list got done this summer, and now there's yet more stuff on the list. But I look at every weekend, and it's full of either travel or events.

I have yet another phone interview tomorrow with Company X. They have two jobs open, and it's finally dawned on me that while I might be qualified for both of the positions, only one of them is more interesting than my current freelance work (which I really enjoy).

Zoe has just jumped into my arms. She doesn't like to sit on my lap while I type; she likes to be held in my arms, which makes thoipaoksdflknujn lksdnf lkas...

I can has LOLcats?

2009-10-19T00:19:00.000-07:00

We have a visitor cat in the house — in the basement TV room, to be exact. Mabel is down there recovering after spending a month outdoors (she was effectively exiled by a new cat in her household).

If you follow the LOLcat photoblog I Can Has Cheezburger.com, you'll recognize the phrase "basement cat." In the lexicon of LOLcats, "basement cat" is the Devil — a black cat with burning red eyes and fangs.

The LOLcats also have "ceiling cat" — an angelic white cat that is often shown at the very top of the set of stairs or on a tall bookcase.

Ironically, Mabel, our "basement cat," is a black cat. And Sheba, who likes to be in the highest place in the house, is a white cat.

Today, basement cat and ceiling cat met briefly in my office. Sheba was completely relaxed. She looked at Mabel, and went back to purring. Mabel, clearly traumatized by her recent persecution, gave a sharp hiss. But since Sheba couldn't hear it, there wasn't a problem.

Mabel soon calmed down, and was disappointed when she was taken back down stairs to her den.

The Monday report

2009-10-05T21:07:00.000-07:00

Yet another round with HR at The Mysterious Company today, bracketed with calls and visits to the accountant to try to get the 2008 taxes resolved so they can be filed by Oct. 15.

Meanwhile, I had bouts of trying to earn more money to share with IRS next year.

Setting up a WordPress blog for a client today was far more complex at the technical end than I had imagined. The WordPress theme I use for my professional blog is extremely easy to configure...I was unpleasantly surprised to discover that the template I chose for him is downright annoying. As a result, I've only got the blog half way set up. But the client loves the iStock photo of the tropical beach I used for the banner. So, yay! something went right.

While dashing back and forth to the accountant and generally feeling sorry for myself I got a smack from reality. A fire truck pulled up to the home of one of my neighbors and EMTs went racing inside carrying all sorts of gear. My neighbor, who is disabled from a work injury, lives alone with his teenage son; his wife and he are getting divorced, and she had been around this weekend with a whole crew of folks, moving what looked like much of the furniture out.

As I drove in town to the accountant's, the ambulance passed headed for his house. By the time I got home my neighbor had been "transported" to the hospital. Poor guy.

Things in my office finally wound down a bit before six. I went for a wonderful walk up to 75th while there was still a bit of sun out, then came home and cooked little zucchini with onions and homemade breadcrumbs for dinner. The Scholar Gentleman cleaned a basket of grapes, and I'm making grape juice. (Squash grapes, simmer, squash some more, drain and cool.)

Random thought: If I had another life to live, I'd like to have red hair and wear it in a braid.

Last week I got the oddest email

2009-10-04T20:25:00.000-07:00

The email was from an HR person, saying that her company was interested in hiring me for a senior communications job.

I remembered the email at about 8 p.m., while I was cleaning up after dinner. It had arrived mid-afternoon, while I was busy trying to finish up a client's project.

I went back and looked at it again. Spam, I figured. But I looked up the HR person on Linkedin and, sure enough, she really did work at that company. So I sent back an email saying I'd be happy to talk.

The following day we chatted, and she asked me to send along my resume.

I updated my resume and sent it off. The woman wrote back and asked for another phone conversation, and that's set for tomorrow morning.

I love running my own company, but this is a challenging opportunity (to put it mildly). There are times when I wish I hadn't left Apple, and this would certainly be my chance to apply all the things I've learned as a small business owner in the past three years — things which I believe would make working a corporate job, at the right company, as much fun as being an indie business person.

Is this the right company? That's what I'm going to try to find out.

Anyone want a lovely cat?

2009-09-22T16:22:00.000-07:00

I can offer a choice of two. A friend of mine adopted Mabel a year ago. She recently adopted Casper, and it turns out that the two cats do NOT get along. So, one of them needs to be re-housed.

Cat #1, Mabel, is a seven-year-old black semi-oriental with short plush fur, likely a Birman. She is one of those happy, sturdy, friendly indoor/outdoor cats who likes laps and visiting all the neighbors. She can live with another cat, but needs to be the dominant cat.
Cat #2, Casper, is a four-year-old mackerel tabby male. He one of those handsome, rangy guys who twines around your legs. Not a lap cat, but would like to be scritched and petted for hours. Casper came from a home where they had just had a baby and moved to a tiny apartment (from a house). He didn't want to be an indoors-only cat, and the new parents didn't have time for him.

Both cats are healthy, have had all their shots and vet stuff, and have perfect manners: They eat anything, use a litter box, and don't scratch furniture or people.

Please let me know if you are interested. I'll deliver anywhere in the Puget Sound region.

Zozobra: Fire power

2009-09-13T14:59:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal had a great article this weekend about the Santa Fe community's annual Zozobra event.

Artisans build a giant structure of wood and chicken wire known as Zozobra. Then citizens bring things symbolic of their troubles (legal papers, wedding dresses from failed marriages, photos of old lovers, letters and notes with their secrets — even hospital gowns) to a public "gloom tent." The evidence of all these woes is stuffed into the Zozobra.

On the night of the festival, dancers with torches set fire to the figure — a functioning marionette that writhes with agony — and everyone's worries symbolically go up in smoke.

And, to think, I was planning on selling my fire pit on Craig's List. No way!