Relatives seen: 30 (approximate)
Weight lost (in pounds):Â 0
Aches & pains:Â sciatic
Current reading: My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk, Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy
Recent listening:Â “Grandma music”
Recent viewing:Â CBS Morning News, The Fugitive, Presidential debate
Recent playing: Chain Factor, Spaceward Ho!
Recently accomplished:Â Travel to Iowa, birthday celebrations with my birthday uncle, Spam Museum (outside only)
Imperative To Do:Â Return home, cancel gym membership, get rid of office junk, freecycle, activate new Tivo, oil change for van, clean garage, office organization, get rid of MacRenewal Macs
Learning songs about the one that got away
Yesterday, part of my IM conversation with Tina went like this:
Tina: so guess what?
Me: what?
Tina: there is a surprise for you in the boys bathroom. it has paws.
Me: mouse?
Tina: and it scared the shit out of me
Tina: yep
Tina: wrapped up in a towel
Tina: waiting for you to come home and throw it away
Me: we should set traps again
Tina: thinks that’s a good idea
Tina: at first i thought it was a toy
Tina: then i saw blood
Tina: then i screamed
Tina: and threw a towel over it
Me: haha
Tina: mice are scary
I was able to guess the answer easily because this is the second we have found this year. The first we took from one of the kittens more than a week ago after they had eaten the guts out of it.
After I got home last night, I went into the bathroom and grabbed the towel in question. I took it out into the garage and put it into the garbage can, which is conveniently full to the top. I unwrapped the folds and found a positively live mouse looking at me inquisitively. There was no sign of blood and the little fellow look quite healthy. I quickly refolded the towel and went back into the house. “That mouse is still alive,” I whispered to Tina. The range of emotions that passed over her face was pretty amusing.
I found a plastic container in the recycling and dumped a little baking soda in it and returned to the garage with the intent of gassing the critter. I put the container on the floor and began to unfold the towel to dump the mouse into the container. Unfortunately, he landed right next to the container and took off under the car. Baby, who just happened to be in the garage with me at that moment, immediately pursued the new toy under the car. I assumed that he would emerge with mouse in mouth, but I was wrong. Soon he was digging around behind some shelves where his brother joined him, but they never caught the bugger.
When Graham got wind of the situation, he refused to go to bed. We eventually talked him into it, but I think that the presence of his nightly companion reassured him that he would be safe from any rogue rodents that might trespass into his bedroom.
Rory spent most of the evening camped in front of the stove intently looking underneath it. Since that was a prime spot for catching mice last year, I’ll put a couple of traps under there tonight as well as one by the cat food and one under the dishwasher.
What remains of the day remains to be seen
I am now in the winning stages of a five day battle with strep throat that caused one side of my neck to swell up and made it very difficult to swallow for several days. The doctor concluded today that it was likely the preliminary stages of an abscess. Yesterday the pain had actually moved into my jaw and the swelling had progressed into the middle of my neck. On my first trip to the doctor on Friday, he prescribed amoxicillin and vicodin after concluding it was probably strep throat. He said to watch the swelling and if it got worse, see him again. And so I returned yesterday after spending a day alternately sleeping and zonked on vicodin. He agreed that the swelling had worsened but wasn’t ready to resort to more drastic measures like prednisone or stronger anti-biotics. He did have me make an appointment for today to check on my progress. I stuck with the omoxicillin and vicodin and threw in a box of shells and cheese (first real food in several days) last night. I slept for nearly 12 hours straight and woke up just in time to make my appointment with him today. And I felt great. And feel great still. Hail to the shells and cheese!
Thursday night I wasn’t feeling very well so I asked Thomas to put the trash and recycling out to the curb. Tina volunteered to help him and I’m grateful they spared me the effort. Sometime during the process, though, our little girl, Rory, snuck out of the garage and hadn’t been seen until just a few minutes ago. Tina and the boys made “missing kitty” posters and were going to plaster them all over the neighborhood. We feared that she had escaped to the greenspace behind our house where coyotes are rumored to wander. We know for sure that there are raccoons back there so we were very concerned. Tonight when we returned from dinner and book shopping at Goodwill, we thought we heard distant meowing outside the garage. When we went outside to investigate, there was Rory on the roof and glad to see us! I can’t tell you how happy our household is at this moment.
Yes, we’re going to a party, party
I had the first week at my new job this week and it was largely uneventful. The one remarkable thing was the striking difference between my current benefit package and my old benefit package at CPS. When I signed on there eight years ago, I remember thinking that it was sub-par, but I made sure to negotiate the differences into my salary. That kind of thinking was certainly a mistake on my part, especially when salary failed to keep up with health insurance costs. Now health insurance premiums are a very minor dent in my paycheck and the other benefits are icing on the cake.
I don’t think I explained before that my “new” job is actually the old job that I left to join CPS back in 1999. Back then I worked in a small office in Vancouver for a company called Splash which had grown successful developing a high quality RIP (raster image processor) that made it possible for computers to print to Xerox color copiers. Our little office was initially tasked with developing a similar product to drive Xerox’ line of wide format printers. Splash eventually attempted to diversify their product line and transferred the Macintosh-based product that had made them successful to the Vancouver office, thinking that it was on it’s last legs. Within a year after I left, Splash was bought by their primary competitor, Electronics for Imaging (EFI). Eventually all of the Splash offices were shut down except the little office in Vancouver, where the team I left continued to churn out high quality Splash-branded, Macintosh-based products for Xerox color copiers. That is the team that I joined this week. It was good to see some familiar faces and exciting to see new faces. I’m really looking forward to my future there.
Thomas is away on Mount Hood with the Boy Scouts this weekend. The BSA owns a snow lodge up there and Thomas’ troop goes up there once a year for inner-tubing fun. This week we celebrated Thomas’ 12th birthday. It’s hard to believe that we’ve had Thomas for that long and even harder to believe that he’ll be out of our hands in another six years. Last weekend he celebrated with his friends in a hotel suite for which a friend got a good deal for us. Tina described that shindig pretty well, so I won’t go into details here. Yesterday he used all the money he got from his birthday and some that he had been saving to buy an iPod Touch, which he has been dreaming about since the iPhone came out last summer.
I was on the news last night…
…but only for a second. Watch the beginning of this story. I’m the fellow with the light gray shirt and a full “ beardbro” style beard who appears on the screen when the voice over says “posts on bike blogs.”
Careful to all animals
A few interesting items I came upon in the last few days:
- Radiohead has released their latest album via the web. The price? It’s entirely up to you.
- The Portland blogosphere is abuzz with news of Google Streetview adding Portland to the list of cities it supports.
- Last night a documentary called Crystal Darkness aired on every station in Oregon. Unfortunately, we didn’t know about it until it was over.
- A cyclist survived being run over by a Max train but is still in critical condition.
Your nose is longer than a telephone wire
Vital Statistics
As I mentioned earlier, I had some problems with some popcorn stuck in my gums. Despite (or because of) my poking and flossing, it became very sore. I was resolved to have my Kakar Dental Group dentist take care of it, but thought I should leave it alone for a few days. Tina suggested swishing it a couple of times a day with Listerine which I did for about three days. Lo and behold, all is well again!
I watched my beloved Hawkeyes fall to Northwestern State last night. I think they drew the highest seed I have ever seen them get and they lose in the first round on a last second three pointer. I feel like Charlie Brown after Lucy pulls the football away. And if it wasn’t bad enough watching them lose it once, it must have been the upset of the day because they showed it about 20 times during the ensuing NCAA coverage on CBS. My bracket is completely blown.
Current reading: Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, 9-11 by Noam Chomsky
McCartney Trivia: A friend of Paul’s was in the “College of ‘Pataphysics”, which was a sort of joke organization for intellectuals, mostly concerned about drinking. Paul is proud that his mention of ‘pataphysics in “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is the only one of it’s kind.
Recent listening: My I’m Large, Somebody’s Miracle, Da Vinci’s Notebook
Recent viewing: March Madness, Suns vs. Clippers, Heat vs. Celtics, Conviction, Medium
Recent playing: Poker Room
Recently Accomplished: Truck maintenance (motor mount may be broken), called Kent and my mom, paid bills
Imperative To Do: Start taxes, retrieve Ryno mail, get truck fixed
Cool link: Battlestar Galactica Blog
Rob’s CD Collection – I will never catch up.
I found the White Album and several others without much effort. See any you recognize? (Hint: Click for a larger version.)
Vital Statistics
At the beginning of the week Tina made popcorn one night for the two of us which we enjoyed as we watched TV. She’s found a really good brand of microwave popcorn that make some really good kettle corn and caramel corn. I don’t remember which we had, but evidently a husk from one of the kernels embedded itself in the gum near the back of my mouth and it’s been there ever since. I didn’t really notice until the area had swollen quite a bit. I’ve flossed many times as well as poking at it with a periodontal probe. Nothing has helped thus far so I think I’ll have to visit my dentist next week to get the problem resolved. The whole area is very sore.
Current reading: Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, 9-11 by Noam Chomsky
Recent listening: Coverville, the rest of the Christmas CDs
Recent viewing: Big Ten Basketball Tournament, Brainiac, Late Show with David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Sportscenter
Recent playing: Poker Room
Imperative To Do: Rebates, renew prescription, start taxes, retrieve Ryno mail
Cool link: PhoneSwarm: Coordinated “swarming” of a particular pay telephone somewhere in the U.S. The number is changed occasionally. You call at your leisure and then post a comment. Or just read the funny comments from others.
Vital Statistics
We made it to San Francisco, but I’m not really enjoying the trip very much. I’m reminded of how much I hate living in cubeland (i.e. cubicles). It’s very, very quiet here almost to the point of distraction.
I had to pass through security twice in Portland because of my money clip. If you heard that knifes less than 4 inches long were allowed, you heard wrong evidently. As I discovered a few years ago at a security checkpoint in Cincinatti, my money clip has a knife in it. I hadn’t planned on checking my bag, so at least I could put the money clip in the bag and check the bag. Back in Cincy, I had to steal a box from the checkout counter because I had already checked all my bags.
Before I went through security, I realized I had forgotten to detach my Leatherman micra from my keychain. I stashed it in the seat cover dispenser in the nearest bathroom. That worked for me once before about 15 years ago at MSP when I was afraid to carry a joint on board and was returning a few days later.
Current reading: n/a (forgot my book in the bag I checked)
Recent listening: n/a (remembered my iPod, forgot the headphones)
Recent viewing: Olympics: freestyle skiing
Imperative To Do: Get out of San Francisco, take out the trash
Here’s me bored in San Francisco:
Update 2/18: My Leatherman micra was waiting for me in the seat cover dispenser when I got back on Thursday.