Category: Personal

Day-to-day life and other ramblings

Sibling Revelry

For a rapid-fire, three-day introduction to the Bay Area, you could do what my sister Katy and I did the first half of this week:

Katy and I have had a tempestuous – is that the right word? Sure, why not – relationship. We didn’t really get along at all in our teenaged years, and we have rather different memories of what it was like growing up in our home town, though to be fair on that count our experiences were quite different for two people who went through the same school system and grew up in the same town with the same parents. So all things considered we didn’t really have a lot of motivation to become friends as adults. I think what changed is that we just grew up (eventually), and my nephew Ivan I think motivated Katy to reconnect, as she drove up with him to visit the last two times I went back to visit my parents. So although I can’t speak for her, on my end I was perfectly comfortable having her stay for a few days before attending the conference she’s at for the second half of this week.

Maybe I pack a little too much into visits from family and friends, but we had a lot of fun, and ate a lot of good food besides. We had great weather – she came out just ahead of the heat wave that’s scorching us today – and had some nice quiet evenings with Debbi and the cats. And as with my Mom, Blackjack was charmed by Katy and visited him every night to snooze with her.

To my amusement, when I introduced her to my cow-orkers on a tour through work, three of them asked whether he had any insight into where my punning nature comes from. She doesn’t really know, though; I think I’m just a prodigy.

So it was fun, and she might even come back! And, for those of you who know both of us, here’s the evidence:

Me and Katy

Busy Work

So yesterday Debbi gives me a call near the end of the day: She’d gone home early due to a slow day at her office, got home and was puttering around the house, when the power went out. No idea why, but she called PG&E and was told that it was targeted to be fixed in the next two hours.

I got home an hour later, and we went out to dinner and did a little shopping. We got home after the 2-hour window, and the power was still out. So I called PG&E again and they said the outage was due to an equipment failure, and it would be fixed in – yup – the next two hours.

Fortunately, 20 minutes later the power came on again, saving us from having to figure out where else we could go to watch Michael Phelps win his 7th gold medal of this year’s Olympics.

Unfortunately, when I opened my laptop to check baseball scores I learned (after running around the house a couple of times) that our phone service was out, both voice and DSL. So I called AT&T and learned that they didn’t have any service appointments over the weekend, and only a 12-hour appointment available on Monday. Grr. (Naturally, I didn’t actually talk to a human during all of this, and it took me nearly 8 minutes to navigate their phone menu system along the way.)

Half an hour later, I checked the phone again and lo and behold it was working again, Intarwebs and all.

So this morning I called AT&T to cancel the appointment.

You guessed it, I’ve been on hold for 30 minutes waiting to cancel an appointment.

Fortunately, shortly after I typed the previous sentence, I got through to a human and within 2 minutes she’s routed me to the right place and I cancelled my appointment. Yay!

Though along the way I learned that I could have cancelled the appointment on-line.

Sigh.

Here’s hoping the rest of the weekend goes more smoothly.

Things That Go ‘Boop’ in the Night

So last night I’m up late surfing the web, and I realize for the last few minutes I’ve been hearing something in the room go “boop”. It sounds a little like a low-pitched “beep”, but more like some old steam pipe venting a small amount of air. It’s only making the sound every 30-40 seconds.

I get up and see Newton sitting on the floor staring at Debbi’s backpack, which is propped up in the corner.

Boop.

I wonder whether one of the cats has somehow gotten trapped in the cupboard behind the bag, but there’s no one in there. And I also realize that I’ve seen all the cats in the last hour, so that’s not very likely. I’m hoping that it’s not some pipe in our walls getting ready to burst or something.

Boop.

It’s really annoying to track down what’s making a sound when it only makes that sound every 30-40 seconds! I’d hear the sound, try to locate where it’s coming from, then look at my watch and try to figure out when it should make the sound again. Meanwhile Roulette has gotten interested, too. So I move Debbi’s bag away from the wall and put my head between it and the cupboard.

Boop.

Right, the sound’s coming from the bag. I take her purse out of the bag and put it on the counter and wait.

Boop.

No, the sound’s coming from inside the bag. Well, her iPod’s in there, but is that it? I rummage around in the bag for a bit.

Boop.

Turns out it’s her cell phone, which is displaying a “Low battery” message on its screen and is helpfully making a noise every 40 seconds to make the battery discharge that much sooner. How nice. I take the phone out and plug it in to its charger, and the sound is gone. So I guess its plaintive cries did get me to give it what it needed.

Debbi tells me she remembered she needed to plug in her phone this morning when she was in the shower, and thought she was losing it when she came down and saw it sitting there plugged in with a green light. Then she saw the note I’d left her and realized I’d plugged it in.

That’s me, Mr. Helpful.

At least I’m helpful when beeped at.

Bugs Bug Me

No, not computer bugs. Okay, those bug me too, especially the ones I wrote myself and have to fix. (But at least they pay me for that.) No, I mean actual insects, which were the sources of some annoyance over the weekend.

First of all, we got the results of the termite inspection for our complex, and the inspector says he found signs of infestation in my unit, and recommends we tent and fumigate the building. This is weird because I was home when he came by, and he didn’t say anything to me about it. I’d have expected that he’d at least have called me over to see what he found and be able to recognize the infestation from first-hand experience. He apparently noted some issues with other buildings, too. However, in one case we think it was an infestation which was killed off years ago, but the damage (which was cosmetic) was never patched up. So now we’re not sure whether we’ve got an active infestation or not. So we’ll likely ask for clarification and/or get a second opinion.

Getting our place tented would be a big pain in the ass, mainly because of the cats, since we’d have to figure out where to put them while it’s going on, and how much cleaning up we’d have to do afterwards. The problem with cats is that you can’t really give them to your friends who already have cats, since cats and other cats often don’t mix. And friends without cats often don’t have cats for a good reason. So we might have to board them, which we’d like to avoid.

Still, termites are rampant in the valley, and as annoying as this would be, I’m sure there will be several house-tentings in my future while I live here. So I shouldn’t kvetch too much.

The other bugs vexing me this week is a colony of wasps which has taken up residence inside my redwood bench which also houses my vegetable planter. I see them crawling in and out through a single spot in the planter. Yesterday, one of them landed on my shoulder, rode me into the house, and stung me through my shirt. Ouchie! I killed it, and fortunately it didn’t leave its stinger in my arm, but it hurt like heck for an hour or so. Today I can barely tell I got stung, which I guess means I’m not allergic to wasp stings – good to know.

Anyway, the wasps are getting pretty annoying, so I want to find a way to take care of them – preferably without tearing the bench apart. So I’ll go to OSH after work and see what I can find.

These wasps have been lurking around the area for a couple of years, and their nests seem to move each year. I guess they die off over the winter and then come back and reestablish themselves. I don’t intrinsically object to their presence, since they do some useful things, but I don’t really want them taking up residence where they see me as a threat which needs to get stung. So I’ll see if I can encourage them to take up residence elsewhere.

Sigh. It’s always something.

T.G.I.F. Dammit

All things considered, this has been a pretty crappy week:

  • A couple of last-minute, difficult projects landed on my shoulders this week, resulting in a great deal of stress for me at work. I managed to finish one today and make progress on the other one, but man, it was a rough week. And of course the things I’d planned to work on got deferred in the meantime. Sigh.
  • Debbi has her own job stress, since the majority shareholder of the company she works for has made an offer to buy the rest of the company. I’ve never been part of a corporate buyout, never mind one of this magnitude, but I’m sure this makes everyone who works there uneasy, since who knows how things might change if the buyout takes place?
  • We’re painting our townhouse complex soon, and I realized that my vegetable garden runs right along one of the exterior walls, so now I’m stressed out that I might need to pull out the vegetables just as they’re ripening in order to allow the painters access. Gah! Maybe I can cover them with tarps for the days they’ll be painting there, or maybe I can offer to paint that section myself after the growing season is over. Sigh.

So I’m really glad it’s Friday, because I’m exhausted and frazzled.

On the bright side:

  • I upgraded my journal to WordPress 2.6 and started having a couple of problems with it. But I eventually discovered that one problem was due to having the wrong bookmark to access the admin pages of my journal (I’d bookmarked the login page rather than the admin page), and the other was because I’d been editing some old entries recently which explained why Akismet‘s “automatically discard spam comments on posts older than a month” feature seemed to be broken – editing the entries apparently re-set their age counter, so I’m getting a little more spam in my spam trap than I used to. But, it looks like it’s all good in the end.

    (All that said, I am really looking forward to using the “live preview” feature of WordPress 2.6, as I’ve wanted to switch to a new journal template for FP for months now.)
  • I got to play poker last night with friends, and finished up a few bucks in our low-stakes game. All of my profits came from a single hand when my set of Jacks beat pocket Aces. I also managed to get away with losing the minimum when my A-Q hit top pair on the flop, and I folded to two bets – correctly, as it turned out as I was up against Aces again. I’m far from a great player, but I seem to be holding my own in this group.
  • And Debbi and I went to my favorite Italian restaurant for dinner tonight. Yay!

I think we’re going to have a low-key weekend. We have a few chores to do, but otherwise we need to empty our brains and de-stress.

Mass Transit

Yesterday we did something rather eccentric: We rode VTA light rail from downtown Mountain View to Downtown Campbell, just ’cause.

I’ve actually wanted to ride the light rail for a while, but haven’t gotten around to it because, well, light rail in the valley doesn’t really go places I want to go, and it’s a lot slower than driving (3-4 times slower). The big problem is that downtown San Jose just isn’t a destination for me; I go there maybe 3 times a year, usually for fairly random things. Otherwise light rail mostly goes through residential and office neighborhoods.

However, I do enjoy riding the train just for the experience, and also to see where it goes and what the neighborhoods are like. It goes through a lot of back-avenue areas in Mountain View before running down the middle of streets in Sunnyvale, Santa Clara and San Jose, so there was a lot to see that I hadn’t seen before, not to mention watching people getting on and off. A lot off teenagers ride the train and switch at the Tasman station, probably to go to the Great Mall in Milpitas (another non-destination for me).

Downtown Campbell has changed a lot since I lived there in 1999-2001: Aside from the light rail, they’ve built several new commercial buildings and a parking garage, so there are more stores and restaurants worth visiting. It’s no longer a depressing little avenue of antique stores with minimal foot traffic. We had lunch at Stacks and poked our heads into several stores and enjoyed the lovely weather. Then we headed back to the train and reversed our commute.

This probably sounds like a pretty weird day out, but I enjoyed it. Why did I enjoy it? That’s a good question. I think I’ve always enjoyed watching the ebb and flow of the city, seeing how things have been built up and torn down and looking for old things among the newer things. There’s a lot to see in this way when riding the T in Boston, and while there’s less out here there are still some interesting tidbits: The closed-and-abandoned building and parking lot that looks like it used to be an activity center, with basketball and volleyball nets in the parking lot. The older rail lines on which the light rail was built, whose remnants are still lying around. The vacant storefronts in downtown San Jose, just a block away from a fairly-busy dining district. And, just sitting on the train being taken somewhere is a lot more relaxing than driving. Slower, but more relaxing.

I think Debbi finds my interest in taking the light rail for no particular reason to be pretty odd, although she was the one to suggest indulging my weird desire a couple of days ago (though I’d talked about it a few times in the past). But I enjoy doing things with no particular aim in mind from time to time. And at least this one got us out of the house!

Minor Details

Leftfield.org is down right now. Ceej is apparently going to swap out the machine tomorrow, as the old machine was apparently on its last legs and frying hard drives left and right. Hopefully she’ll be able to retrieve all the old data – especially my e-mail.

Leftfield being down always stresses me out more than I feel it should.

Anyway, send me e-mail via this site in the meantime.

We’re experiencing another heat wave in the Bay Area this week, although it’s not as bad as the last two; highs in the low 90s where I am, and temperatures down to a bearable 80 degrees by 7 pm, and in the low 70s by bedtime. It should break on Friday and be a nice weekend.

I finally went out and bought a new garbage disposal for the kitchen sink, as the old one has been busticated for a couple of years. I hired a contractor through Sears to install it, as it seemed like a little more work than I wanted to put in. I’m willing to screw with the electrical system in my house for fun and education, but I don’t really want to mess with the water system, as I think I could really do some damage if I screw it up. Anyway, the contractor’s coming out tomorrow. Hopefully it will all go smoothly.

And that’s the news.

Slightly Freaky

So tonight Debbi and I are playing some Gin Rummy when we hear Blackjack let out a frightened yowl. We turn around and see him in the kitchen, low to the ground, looking totally freaked out. He’s looking under the stove or fridge and crawling with his belly on the ground. I pick him up and he clings to me like Roulette does when she’s scared or upset. But Blackjack is rarely scared or upset. I give him to Debbi and she carries him to the couch, where he lies on her like a lump.

I look around in the kitchen but don’t see anything. I also go look around upstairs, with the other cats following my around. They’re also a little agitated and want to smell Blackjack when we put him back on the floor.

We were pretty baffled about what had gotten into him. My best guesses were that he was feeling sick, or that he was freaked out by the occasional day-after firecracker we heard, or (and here’s a pleasant thought) that there’s an intruder in the house. The last thought wasn’t made better by noticing that the dome light in my car was on for some reason, although it’s possible we either turned it on accidentally today, or that we turned it on last night while we were stuck in traffic coming back from fireworks (when we often turned off the engine and played some rummy since traffic was at a dead stop for minutes at a time).

However, we eventually heard another firecracker go off, and Blackjack quickly high-tailed it upstairs and hid in the closet. So I’m pretty sure he’s just scared to death of fireworks, while the other cats are a little agitated by them but not too freaked out. We’ve been out of town for the last two July Fourths so we haven’t recently seen what he thinks about the fireworks.

So that’s made for a rather creepy evening. But hopefully things will be back to normal tomorrow.

I feel really bad for Blackjack, though. Poor guy.

Quiescence

I’m not feeling too typative (ha) lately. I’ve been pretty busy with hobbies and such over the past week. For instance, tinkering with my Magic decks, playing some Magic with Subrata on Sunday, watching Battlestar Galactica, reading Dan Harrington’s two new books on poker cash games, finally finishing the first volume of Terry and the Pirates, cooking dinner rather often, etc. etc. On top of that we bought some new chairs for the upstairs porch and put them together, I planted some new flowers up there, and I’ve been doing some ongoing cleanup of the study (you wouldn’t believe how many old manuals and computer CDs and DVDs I have to throw out).

So my brain hasn’t been in a journalling place lately. But maybe soon.

I am looking forward to the upcoming long weekend, though!

Another Brutal Heat Wave

The Bay Area is suffering through another brutal heat wave. It arrived on Thursday today it only lessened slightly; rather than hitting the high 90s, it peaked at around 92 and stayed there. The only respite has been the occasional cloud that passes over, but it’s still sweltering outside. I actually set ten pounds of ice in a big bowl and put it behind our box fan, and that helped a little bit, but even in our relatively-insulated downstairs it’s in the mid-80s. Upstairs it’s in the 90s, at least.

This would be bad enough, but on top of that Debbi’s still sick. She was laid low by a cold or something on Tuesday, missed two days of work, and although she’s got some of her energy back and her sore throat is gone, she’s now got a terrible cough along with some congestion. We’d though of going to see a movie today (to get their air conditioning), but Debbi was afraid she’d have a coughing fit in the theater. And she’s spent a chunk of the afternoon asleep on the couch.

To add insult to injury, I realized the Red Sox were on TV today, but Daisuke Matsuzaka melted down in the first two innings and the Sox lost to the Cardinals 9-3.

So, a pretty brutal Saturday. I’m hoping it will cool off a little earlier tonight, and that the heat wave will pass tomorrow. Of course, yesterday the weather report thought it would pass today, so I don’t know. Hopefully soon, though.