Category: Personal

Day-to-day life and other ramblings

The Kitty What Meows at Night

Debbi and I have a problem: Newton, our 16-year-old cat, has started standing in the middle of the bedroom in the middle of the night (anytime between midnight and 4 am) and meowing. What does he want? We don’t know. Sometimes he’ll come up to snuggle with us for a few minutes, and then he goes back to the floor and meows some more.

And wakes us up, naturally.

My best idea for discouraging him was to put a night-light in the bedroom (so I can see him) and squirt him with a water bottle when he starts up. But it’s not really working, partly because he’s figured out what when I sit up he should go hide under the papasan so he can’t get squirted.

I asked the vet about it around Thanksgiving (it’s gotten more frequent since then), and she said that geriatric cats do strange things for no particular reason, and she didn’t have any suggestions. So we don’t know what to do.

We can, I suppose, lock him and the other two cats out of the bedroom overnight, or just lock Newton in the other bedroom by himself. The latter seems a little cruel, and while the former may become necessary, I can easily see him meowing from the hall and scratching at the door, so that’s no guarantee.

Last night fortunately he only meowed briefly after we went to bed, and then curled up under our top blanket. Debbi has a theory that maybe his old body is uncomfortable in the cold weather and he’s complaining to us about it. It was a little warmer last night. So maybe there’s something to that – it’s as good an idea as any, I guess.

But we’re not going to be able to survive him waking us up 4 or 5 times a week, so we have to figure something out.

Disposal Day

Today we made the long, long overdue trip to the SMaRT Station to get rid of a bunch of stuff. We’ve been dutifully collecting old light bulbs and batteries rather than tossing them in the trash, and last month I went through a bunch of electronic junk and filled a box with cables, peripherals, and even two laptops (whose hard drives I completely wiped) to get rid of.

Dumping the stuff turned out to be trivial: The woman working the public disposal site pointed us at the correct bins, and we chucked it all. The electronics bin had an amusing sign, “No scavenging”. Considering the station is near Weird Stuff and right in Silicon Valley, I imagine plenty of people come by to collect old electronics for free. I was amused at some of the ancient crap people had chucked (wow, people are still getting rid of ancient computer tape drives in 2010), but I certainly didn’t want to scavenge any of it!

Debbi noticed that they also accept old paint cans there, and since I have a whole bunch of old paint cans in the garage – inherited from the previous owner – almost none of which are any good anymore, I’m sure (or even relevant, since the exterior has since been painted in new colors), I should go through them and take them in for disposal, too.

Afterwards we walked a little on the nearby San Francisco Bay Trail, hoping to spot the extension they just finished building behind Moffett Field, but we weren’t close enough to see it, and it was too cold and windy to walk that far given how we were dressed. However, I was disappointed to see that the trail at that point isn’t paved, which means no biking on it for me with my road bike. Too bad.

We discovered several wonderful new smells, some at the station and some at the salt ponds by the bay trail. Whee! All that wind is good for something after all.

…And To All A Good Week!

If it’s the holiday season, then it must be holiday break time for me and Debbi, since both our companies shut down from Christmas Eve to New Year’s.

Work was jam-packed right up to the break. In addition to my own work, I’ve been getting several newer employees up to speed on area I work on, used to work on, or just have some general familiarity with. (“How does that work again? Oh yeah… no wait… hmm. Let me check the source code.”) It sure is nice to have more people contributing to my area, but coordinating with multiple people at once takes plenty of time on its own!

Friday we drove around picking up food for Christmas dinner, and then I did a draft on Magic Online. I’d set up a Windows machine a few months ago for just this purpose, and finally made time to play. It was a Scars of Mirrodin draft, and I didn’t do very well, ended up White/Black (not really a solid archetype) with some Metalcrafting, won my first game, lost my next two, and thus was out in the first round of the single-elimination tournament. Bummer. But, now I know how it works, so I can play again!

Then we tidied up the guest room and a little after 4 pm our friend Karen arrived. She’s visiting for the weekend and part of the week, as she did last year, having driven down from the Northwest.

Since it was Christmas Eve we didn’t make solid plans for dinner, and decided to go out to a Mexican restaurant in town. It was dark, so we headed out towards an Italian place. I commented that a nearby strip mall was darker than I’d ever seen it. And then the next block was dark, too. And we realized the street lights were out. Yes, there was a many-blocks-long blackout along El Camino Real in Mountain View, covering the Italian restaurant too. Not really an obstacle we’d expected to have to deal with on Christmas Eve. Fortunately, downtown still had power, so we had dinner at Cascal, even getting there in time for happy hour!

We spent a quiet Christmas at home, opening presents, talking to family, and listening to Christmas music. Oh, and listening to the occasional rain. I made dinner in the late afternoon: Bacon-wrapped meatloaf, potatoes gratin, and Debbi steamed some carrots. It all came out very yummy! I got to use the combination infrared/probe thermometer Debbi got me for Christmas on the meatloaf. In the evening we played Tetris on the Wii and had cheesecake for dessert.

Today we had reservations for dinner at the Moss Beach Distillery, which was yummy as always. And sunny and almost warm, too! After a short walk along the coast, we drove up to San Francisco where we went to the Contemporary Jewish Museum since Karen wanted to see their exhibit about Curious George. After a walk around Union Square, we then dropped in on Borderlands Books where, alas, we failed to see any kitties. And then we headed home, had dinner at Su Hong, and rounded out the day with more Tetris.

More planned for the first half of the week, before Karen heads out.

How was your Christmas weekend?

Run Run Run

So biking season ended when Daylight Savings Time did – mainly because I don’t like biking home in the dark. But I didn’t want to be a slug all winter (even if I do play frisbee once a week), so I’ve taken up running.

Now, you have to understand: I hate running. I think it’s boring, and it doesn’t have the advantage of biking in being able to go fast. Plus I’ve had shin splints for years, and this year I’ve mixed in problems with my right heel. So, really not a lot of fun all around.

But one of my cow-orkers suggested I try running so I land on the balls of my feet, rather than my heels. It’s weird to change my gait, and whenever I start out I feel like I’m leaning backwards and leaping into a ballet recital. But I get used to it surprisingly quickly, and I don’t even have to focus on maintaining the gait. Well, once I’ve run far enough that I start getting tired I need to concentrate a little, but that’s not bad.

But more importantly, neither my shins nor my heel have hurt much since I started, which makes getting up in the morning to go running a lot less dreadful.

I’m currently running about 1-3/4 miles every other day, and averaging between an 11 and an 11:30 minute mile. I guess I’d like to get up to about 3 miles, and then try to increase my speed, because I don’t think I could stand to run for more than about 30 minutes at a stretch.

I’ll be happy when biking season rolls back around, too.

More Adventures with Newton

So Wednesday I had the feeling that something was not right with Newton. Now, all three cats have been in mega-sleep-overtime during my week off, probably a little confused that I’ve been around, and bored that I wasn’t playing with them. Plus it’s been hecka cold, which may have made them want to curl up and snooze.

But Thursday it had become clear that Newton wasn’t eating or drinking very much, and Friday morning he didn’t take his daily pill (for hyperthyroidism), which he always takes because he loves pill pockets. He did eat some soft food we bought, though, and he’d drink some water out of the sink. I worried that his mouth hadn’t healed well from his oral surgery, or had gotten infected, since the vet didn’t give me antibiotics for him.

So Friday afternoon we took him in to the vet. She checked him out and said his mouth has actually been healing very well. But I also said that he’d been having some diarrhea, and going on our bathroom carpets too, and she said that his thyroid meds – which we recently upped in dosage because his thyroid level had gone up – can cause diarrhea as a side effect. And of course diarrhea leads to dehydration, and he has been dehydrated.

So he’s been off the thyroid meds for the weekend, and he’ll go back to his older level tomorrow, and then go up a little – but not as far – in a week, and see how he does. But I foresee having to balance controlling his thyroid vs. disturbing his bowels. He’s also on a round of medication to help his diarrhea.

He seems to be getting better, although he’s not yet eating a lot, and he’s still kind of lethargic. So I’m still worrying about him a lot. Debbi tells me that worrying about him doesn’t help anyone, but it’s hard not to worry. I am encouraged that he still drinks out of the sink, and he is eating some things. But he’s not back to normal.

All-in-all, not really what I’d wanted to be spending my mental energy on over Thanksgiving weekend.

We did have some fun, though: Visited a couple of friends who are moving away next month, visited a couple of other friends and their infant and had brunch. Went for a walk in a part of our neighborhood we hadn’t walked through before.

Hard to believe it’s back to work tomorrow.

A Little Time Off

I’ve got the week off from work, so I’ve been hanging around the house working on various projects. My big accomplishment was to catalogue 4 months’ worth of comics and file them. (I sold a bunch of ones I decided not to keep back to my store for store credit. Handy trick, that!) The next project was to go through a whole bunch of old electronic gear and prep it to get rid of: Wiping hard drives on old laptops, figuring out which old cables and accessories to keep, and so on. It’s amazing how this crap builds up over the years.

I spent this morning reconfiguring our wireless network. I recently bought a new DSL modem (the old one died spontaneously two weeks ago), and also got our DSL upgraded, so I wanted to reposition the wireless base station to get better signal downstairs. An hour of fiddling with modem and base station configuration, and running ethernet cable across the room, everything’s working again, and indeed we do seem to be getting faster connections downstairs.

My next computer trick will be to sign up for Magic Online so I can waste time playing Magic a different way. I’ve repurposed my previous-generation MacBook Pro for this by installing Windows 7 on it, and I’ll probably sign up this weekend. It’s been a decade since I used Windows regularly, and it’s really weird: It feels like I’m flashing back to the 1990s, as other than brighter colors it seems like it hasn’t really changed since Windows 95. I imagine it will take a little experience to remember how it all works. (Not to mention that I hear the interface to Magic Online is pretty crappy. I can’t believe they haven’t written a Mac client for it; seems like Wizards of the Coast is living in the 90s when it comes to technology, too.)

I also got some good news this morning: Last Friday I took Newton to the vet for oral surgery. In addition to a tooth cleaning, he’d grown a mass on the inside of one cheek, which he had removed. I was quite worried about him, not just about the mass but because he’s had alarming drops in blood pressure when he’d been anesthetized in the past, and he’s now 16-1/2 years old, so I wasn’t sure how well he’d handle another round of surgery. Turns out he came through it fine, and today the vet called to say that the biopsy of the mass showed it to be benign. A big relief all around! He’s been extra-snuggly since he came home from the vet, too.

We’re having quite a cold snap this week: Cities in the area recorded record low temperatures last night, and it may be even colder tonight. Nothing my Boston-incubated blood can’t handle, of course. But quite a shock considering it was cracking 80 a little over a week ago.

We’re having a quiet Thanksgiving tomorrow, though we’re still cooking the full Turkey Day dinner. Most of it works fine as leftovers, after all. We can probably put them outside to keep them frozen overnight!

Weekend Roundup

We had a nice quiet weekend, highlighted by joining our friends Lisa and Michel and their daughter for lunch (after Lisa and Debbi went shopping). I have this bizarre ability to charm young kids (“cats and small children love Michael”, says Debbi), and their daughter is apparently always excited to see me. I think Debbi feels a little left out sometimes.

Sunday I was feeling a bit blah all day. Maybe because it was raining, even though I usually like the rain. Or maybe the time change threw me off.

I’ve started running again now that biking season is basically over, so we got up and jogged a mile and a half (people who follow me on Twitter or Facebook are probably well acquainted with my running progress and lack-of-prowess). After running errands in the morning we stayed inside and watched football for the rest of the day, catching up on a few things around the house. Though we forgot to do a few chores in the bedroom (rotating the mattress, painting over the holes from the mounted shelf we moved last weekend). Maybe next weekend. For dinner I grilled hamburgers, and of course the rains returned for exactly the span of time I was grilling!

I’ve actually been very busy lately but have not felt much like updating. My plan is to push through some accumulated book reviews (sorry, everyone who can’t stand my book reviews) and then do some shorter-but-more-frequent updates on other subjects.

Disneyland at Halloweentime

Last weekend we made our annual trip to Disneyland. I’d advocated that we go sometime other than our usual December trip so that we can see the park when it’s not decked out for Christmas.

Of course, it was decked out for Halloween instead, but that’s actually less of a change than Christmas. I was a little disappointed that the Haunted Mansion had already switched to the decor for The Nightmare Before Christmas as I’d looked forward to seeing the base Mansion for a change, but oh well. Even more disappointing was the “Ghost Galaxy” decor for Space Mountain, which has terrible music and ridiculous imagery – Space Mountain is a fine roller coaster, but this decor was so awful we decided only to ride it once. I hope they rethink this in future years.

The trip was a little bittersweet because one of the couples we went with got ill and had to bow out on Monday, while the other is buying a house in southern California and left on Monday to deal with that. So we were on our own on Monday. On the other hand, it is generally easier for two people to make decisions about what to do in the park than six people, but still, it wasn’t what we’d planned.

We did get optimal weather on Monday, though: Rain in the morning to scare away the locals, and then warm and sunny the rest of the day!

We did a few things I’d never done before: Saw Great Moments with Mister Lincoln, which is shorter and lighter than I’d expected (though the animatronics are impressive). It made me want to watch Ken Burns’ The Civil War sometime (since I don’t think I’m up for reading actual books about the event). We also went to Tom Sawyer Island; I hadn’t realize just how much stuff there is over there, lots of little tunnels and ladders to follow, it’s probably great fun for kids.

The renovation of California Adventure continues. The metal structures for Cars Land are going up, the World of Color is live (it’s pretty good, but really just a higher-tech Fantasmic without a storyline), and Mulholland Madness is being redressed as a Goofy character ride. I’ll be sad when all the northern California bits have been ripped out and replaced with character bits, but as long as they still have California Screamin’ I won’t complain too much. (We rode it 3 times.)

We ended up hitching a ride home on Tuesday with a different friend due to the one couple getting ill, but it was fun to spend some time with him (and that way he didn’t have to drive back alone). We had a good time overall, even though things didn’t really go as planned.

Book Discussion Prologue

At last night’s book discussion, I sat down between L, the moderator, and N, another attendee. Then the following exchange took place:

Me (just being a goofball): Wow, now I’m between a rock and a hard place.

pause

L: Hey!

N: Wait… which of us is which?

Me: I’m going to let you work that out between the two of you.

pause

Me: Wait, I’m between the two of you!

Not Quite The Weekend(s) I’d Planned On

Last weekend wasn’t the weekend I’d planned on because I spent most of it at work. It was, at least, a very productive weekend at work (and we got lunch delivered), but still, not really what I’d planned on.

This weekend was at least not spent at work. Unfortunately, I’d planned to go to a Magic draft yesterday afternoon (I’m trying to do one per month, since I really enjoy doing them but it’s hard to set aside the time), but when I showed up at the store it turned out they were doing a different sort of tournament and not a draft. So away I went disappointed. Though I did swing by Comics Conspiracy for their fall sale and found a few things. I spent the afternoon organizing stuff in the front room instead, which wasn’t really bad, but not what I’d wanted to do.

Today we went to the Moss Beach Distillery for their Sunday champagne brunch. I was disappointed to see they no longer had their gingerbread pancakes, although their french toast is quite good itself. And we sat on their patio and enjoyed the (foggy, but warm) weather afterwards. But this trip wasn’t quite what we planned since we got stuck in massive traffic both going and coming back due to all the pumpkin patches in Half Moon Bay. It wasn’t a total drag, but still.

All of these I guess are “first world problems”, but I’m still bummed about the draft – I’d been looking forward to it all week. Ah well.