Police Log

Some recent updates from the Police Log. Handbag Missing A 72-year-old Plymouth Meeting woman told police her handbag went missing after she hid it in a bush outside her house on the 2900 block of Sheffield Drive, according to June 28 incident report. The woman said she put the handbag in a bush because she saw a man she did not know walking toward her as she was getting something out of her car. When she went to retrieve the handbag it was gone. Disturbance A female reported to police on June 22 that she wanted to report an altercation she was involved in earlier. The female reported that she pulled into a parking lot in the 100 block of Crawford Avenue and found another vehicle parked, not diplaying a handicap placard or plate, in a disabled person's spot. The female obtained the plate number of the vheicle as the driver was leaving and then contacted plice to report the incident. Police are still investigating.

Take this quiz: You know you're a cat weirdo when...

We have a new cat visiting us. It's a very young kitten who's been following Gray Kitty around. We call him/her "Black and Whitey" because of his/her coloring, but we're trying to come up with a new name. I think "Orca" might be a possibility. We also have an occasional visit from a white and orange spotted cat. All of these cats have led us to wonder if we've become cat weirdos. So here's a test: You know you're a cat weirdo when... 1. You're excited when a new stray cat shows up outside on your deck. 2. Every morning you check the deck to see if there are any stray cats outside. 3. You worry about the stray cats that you don't see for a few days. 4. You go outside from a different, inconvenient door so as not to frighten the stray cats on the deck. 5. Everyone (you know who you are) sends you a birthday card with a cat on it. 6. All your blog postings are about cats.

Bird Adventure

On Saturday morning, I was in the basement and I opened the door from the basement to the garage -- I forget why, probably to let Whitey or Olive out. Rich always said we shouldn't leave that door open because Olive might bring her prey in, but there was a nice breeze and Olive doesn't really catch animals that often, so I left the door open, carelessly disregarding Rich's sage advice. The next thing I knew Olive was frantically chasing something in the basement and there was a lot of fluttering and squawking. A house finch flew up and perched in the ceiling joists. Olive was beside herself with excitement, but the bird was totally out of reach. He must have known he was pretty safe, because he just sat there on the joist. I left the door open, hoping that he would find his way out without Olive noticing, and went upstairs. Later I noticed a few feathers on the basement floor, so I figured that Olive had won. Nope. A couple of hours later I heard a chirping noise from the living room, and saw the bird sitting in the window. Now what? I managed to sneak up on him with a paper grocery bag and get him into the bag. This time there was more squawking than ever -- he must have thought he was really done for this time. I let him go outside. He seemed to be in good shape because he flew right across the street and headed for a very tall tree. I went back into the house and saw Whitey stalking into the living room. He was undoubtedly attracted by the exciting sounds of an upset bird, which he apparently still found extremely interesting even at his age (pushing nineteen). Luckily at his age he doesn't remember too much about why he's doing something, so I don't think his disappointment at not finding a bird in his house lasted too long.

Still too Lazy to Update

Just a quick note on Peter's classes for the fall. He had two PE requirements so he decided to take them both in one semester. He selected "Circus Skills" and "Outdoor Skills". After hearing about Circus Skills, Mom's Overactive Imagination kicked in and I immediately envisioned the topics of "Lion Taming", "High Wire", "Fire Eating", "Shooting out of Cannon", and "Trapeze Techniques with Hostile Partner". At least I thought that Outdoor Skills would be relatively safe, but then I thought of --
Week 1: Quicksand Self-Rescue
Week 2: First aid for Snakebite (includes practice with antivenom)
Week 3: Vein or Artery? Tips on Using Tourniquets
Spring Break: Rock-Climbing Trip to El Capitan (optional Free Solo )
Week 5: Where is that Bear Cub's Mom?
Week 6: Forest Mushrooms: Gourmet Feast or Painful Death?
Week 7: What to do if Your Arm Gets Stuck under a Big Rock and You didn't Tell Anyone Where you Went
Week 8: Mountain Men of the Rockies: Customs and Weaponry

Update!

Regular readers of this blog have probably been worried that there hasn't been a post for awhile. Is she dead? In a coma? In prison? Rehab? Does she hate us? No, the reason is much simpler, first a lot of travel, then laziness.
Unfortunately, I do have some sad news. Sandy passed away at the ripe old age of 16, only a couple of weeks after her birthday. We miss her but we like to think that she had a full life and didn't really have any medical problems until close to the end.
As for the travel, the first trip was to Orlando for a W3C meeting. Besides lots of exciting work on World Wide Web standards, we also enjoyed a trip to the Kennedy Space Center, where we had a tour and heard a talk by an astronaut. Here I am with some of my colleagues and the astronaut, who is in the middle.
Then it was on to Sarasota, to see Rich's mom and dad, and Aunt Sue and Uncle Mike, where we had, as usual, a nice visit, including a lot of wonderful meals. Rich stayed in Sarasota for a few more days while I went out to San Diego for a conference. Here we are enjoying a meal in Sarasota.

Gray Kitty Those of you with whom we've been in communication by the quaint medium of "telephone" will know that we have a new animal-related project, befriending "Gray Kitty", a (possibly) stray cat that has taken to hanging around our deck mooching for a handout. Gray Kitty likes to sit right outside our kitchen door, meowing loudly for a meal. After s/he gets a dish of cat food, s/he then meows loudly for us to go away so that s/he can eat in peace, because Gray Kitty is afraid of us and doesn't like to eat when we're nearby. Gray Kitty is getting to be  quite at home in our yard, having been observed chasing away another (possibly) stray cat(Dark Gray Kitty with White-Tipped Tail). I should point out that while I call our project "befriending Gray Kitty", Rich calls it "stealing the neighbor's cat".
Bad Tree! Another bad tree has fallen into our yard. Well, half of a tree. The other half is still standing in the neighbor's yard, at least for now. This one is very far from the road, which is good in that it doesn't look as horrible as the first one, but bad in that there's less of an incentive to get rid of it. You can hardly even see it from the house. When I told the tree service our address they said "Oh, yeah, the big sycamore tree". (See the December 19 post)

Home Improvements

Here are some pictures of our latest home improvments. First, a fireplace insert with a fake electric fire  and heater. This doesn't look  as cool as a real fire, but it also  doesn't  suck all the heat out of the  house and take forever to get started. The picture was supposed to show me  cozily having a  cup of tea and reading  a book with a cat sleeping on my lap, but the cat (Olive) declined to cooperate and had to be held on my lap  with a death grip  while the picture was taken. That's why she and I both look a  bit tense  in the picture. After taking the fire picture, we  retired to the basement pub (still not named! please see earlier post!) to take the other picture, which  shows the new bar after the wood was finished, along with our new fake tree. We're trying to achieve  the atmosphere of a "fern pub".  Since there's almost no natural light in the basement, this has to be done with fake greenery. On the other hand, if we wanted to work with the natural light, the other option would be to have a "mushroom pub".

Sweet Sixteen!

The year is 1992. Sarah is halfway through first grade at Plymouth Elementary. Peter is working on learning shapes and colors at Windmill Day School. The 1992 Presidential campaign is starting up, with the race becoming an eventual showdown between Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Ross Perot. There are 26 servers on the World Wide Web. Somewhere in Pennsylvania, a litter of precious blond cock-a-poo puppies is born, including one dainty young girl. Two months later, we brought that young lady home and named her Sandy. Our cats, Whitey and Gus, were not terribly pleased, but eventually they all came to tolerate each other. Sandy is also known affectionately as "Sandom", "Sanj", "Sandypants", and "Sanjmeister". Sandy still gets the paper for us in the morning (see the post "Sandy gets the paper" from November 11), and enjoys her hobbies, which are mainly sleeping and barking. Let's all wish Sandy a happy 16th birthday!

Happy New Year!

We went to Margaret Kuo's restaurant last night for a Chinese New Year feast. It was really good. I would say it was better than Cin Cin, or even Susanna Foo. There were seven courses. Somehow they were supposed to be specially complementary to 4706, the Year of the Rat, although luckily the honored animal did not make an appearance  in any way,  except for the cute logo on the menu, which you can see. Here are the courses:

• Chef's Tri-Happiness Hors d'oeuves Platter (beef, asparagus and spicy shrimp)
• Steamed Crabmeat and Pork Bun Shanghai Style
• Royal Peking Duck
• Mandarin Cold Water Lobster Tail
• Grass-fed Beef Filet in Chinese Rice Wine Sauce
• Pine Nut Sea Bass (this was our favorite)
• Propitious Sweet Rice with Eight Treasures

Fortunately, the first four courses were pretty small. We were able to soldier on up to about half way through the beef and sea bass, but then we hit the wall, and had to ask them to pack the rest up for us to take home.  Margaret is going to be cooking some of these at the James Beard Foundation next week in New York , but we got to eat it first!
Pet update: Olive's First Prey of 2008 has been identified as a meadow vole (Microtus pennsylvanicus) which emerged from hibernation at just the wrong time, at least from its point of view. Well, technically, this was her first prey not counting the decorative ears of corn she's been dragging around the dining room. We also heard some meowing from Olive this morning while she was perched on the window sill. This turned out to be due to an invasion by Gray Kitty, a neighbor cat  who has been encroaching on Whitey and Olive's territory.

Mange Update

Sandy just had her last shot! Now she can't be called a "mangy cur" anymore! I think she'll actually miss going to the vet every week. The people in the office fawn all over her and pet her, and she gets to meet all kinds of interesting new dogs.

Pet Log

Well, Sarah, if you think that the idea of training a web cam on Hammy would mean that your life is sad, please don't tell me what you think of this. I kept track of the pets' activities one day so  that anyone who's interested in Sandy, Whitey and Olive can see what they're doing on an hour by hour basis. This is a log of their activities from Friday, January 25.

Time	Pet	Behavior	What Pet wants
6:35	Sandy	barking	go out
6:50	Olive	walking on us	breakfast
7:18	Whitey	meowing	breakfast
7:42	Olive	walking on newspaper	Debbie's breakfast
8:00	Olive	stand by door	go out
8:02	Whitey	stare at kitchen	someone to check his dish in case it's empty
8:00	Sandy	barking	unknown (Whitey's breakfast?)
8:41	Sandy	dogging footsteps	go out
8:45	Olive	wistful looking at dish	snack
8:50	Sandy	roll on back	ear scratching
11:20	Sandy	martyred look	go out
11:33	Olive	looking at dish with dissatisfied expression	lunch
11:43	Whitey	hop on Debbie's lap	stir food in dish
11:44	Olive	looking at door	go out
12:33	Olive	mournful face at window	come in
12:33	Sandy	barking	lunchtime dog treat
2:02	Whitey	hop on lap, rub face on pen	snack
2:05	Sandy	dogging footsteps, hopeful look	go out
3:23	Whitey	hop on chair	unknown (he forgot?)
4:49	Whitey	meowing, hop on lap	snack
4:50	Olive	restless pacing, baleful look	snack
4:55	Sandy	dogging footsteps, expectant look	go out
6:30	Sandy	nonstop barking	snack
7:04	Whitey	baleful expression	snack
10:00	Sandy	dogging footsteps, hopeful look	go out

Pet Update

All the pets are doing well. Olive's newest habit is attacking a small ear of decorative corn we have on our buffet. When she comes in from outside, she heads straight for the buffet, grabs the corn, and carries it under the table. Here she is grabbing the corn. Although there are several ears of corn in the basket, for some reason, she only attacks one ear at a time. We think the things she normally attacks are all hibernating, so she's looking for something to do. Sandy was obsessed with biting her feet for awhile. We were originally told that she had fleas, and we were scolded for not keeping her up to date on her Top-Spot. This (that is, the part about not keeping up to date on the Top Spot) was true, but it actually turned out that she had sarcoptic mange, which is a disgusting mite infestation. Luckily, it's nothing that a few expensive and time-consuming visits to the vet can't take care of. Apparently people can catch it from their dogs, although it does require a canine host to (shudder) reproduce. This makes me itch just thinking about it, but thank goodness we haven't gotten it from her. She's doing really well now, and has stopped biting her feet.

Arrival at College

We took Peter to Purchase on Monday. It seemed  like Peter had about one tenth of the stuff that Sarah  had, so it was pretty easy to get everything  packed. It's a little over two hours away, not too  bad of a drive. For some reason, Nuvi the GPS wanted to route us directly through New York City, which is on the way, but it's not really a good idea to drive through. We had to override Nuvi quite a few times. Technically it would be a shorter distance  if we went that way, but it would probably take about three times as long. It seemed pretty disorganized when we got there. There  were no signs or anything to tell us where to go or where to park, and when we did get to the office of Residence Life they didn't seem to know what to do. There was no elevator, and Peter's room is on the third floor! I made friends with a crippled dad whom I met inching his way downstairs with his cane. Eventually we found Peter's room, which was already occupied by a sleeping dude, (this is at noon) aka Roommate #1. He  explained that he was still sleeping because he had gone to  bed at 4:00 a.m. and didn't say anything else as long as we were there except that he told us where the Ethernet connection was.  He was playing a game on his computer that was making strange moaning noises the whole time we were there. I kept thinking it was him, but luckily I was wrong. Here's Peter at his desk. Even though the room was a triple, there was plenty of room for Peter's stuff.  Here's Peter hanging the flag of Brittany in his window. After we found the room we went to lunch, unpacked, and then went to the bookstore for a few forgotten items. We went back home after that. It seems pretty strange not to have Peter around. I expect we'll soon be settling into the "empty nest" lifestyle, where we go to bed at 9:00 p.m., buy half gallons of milk, and pay inordinate amounts of attention to our pets.   Well, must go, I think Olive wants a snack.

Party Suggestion -- Burns Supper!

Here's an idea for January 25 (Robert Burns's -- and Aunt Sue's!) birthday -- a "Burns Night", featuring haggis, bagpipes, Scotch, and inscrutable Scottish poetry. Check out the immortal "Address to a Haggis".

New Weather Report! Preparing for College!

One of our Christmas gifts was a backyard weather station, which we finally managed to set up after what seemed like several hundred unsuccessful trips to Lowes for mounting hardware, followed by one successful trip to Radio Shack. We have a wind gauge, temperature sensor, rain gauge and barometer. It also came with software for putting the data on the web. You can see our data by clicking on the new weather link. It's been 40 degrees and raining for the last week. So far then, there's really been no need to check the weather station because the weather hasn't changed. Gearing up to take Peter to college on Monday. Piling up stuff in Sarah's room. Doesn't seem like enough -- what are we forgetting? Supposed to buy "Extra long" sheets. Why? Can't remember size of sheets I bought, will Peter end up short-sheeted? Finally got all of his files/programs off his old computer onto his new laptop, using "Windows Easy (not!!!) Transfer". Hope didn't transfer too many viruses/adware, or at least not the really bad ones. There hasn't been too much progress on the pub name. So far the only suggestions have been "The Babbling Friend", a nod to our nearby stream and the Plymouth Quaker heritage, and "The Coal Hole", evoking the coal mining history of Pennsylvania. Of course French suggestions would be merveilleux (BabbleFish offers le Quaker de babillage, and le trou de charbon).