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)
