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.