A quick observation on Waltham demographics

During a brief stop at the local Shaw's Victory Hannaford's Supermarket down by Main St, I saw not one, but two other asian dudes over six feet tall.

Represent, yo.

Still here

AEM06 Day 8 -- flipbook
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

Hey.

I hadn't really planned on doing AEM this year, but then I decided that I'd do it. And then I figured I'd quit because I had so much other stuff going on. (which was why I wasn't going to do it.) And then I found myself doing art everyday anyway. And then I tried to dial it back.

But it's been just little things here and there, and I haven't really had the time or inclination to post. I figured I'd just check in, say hi, and give y'all a peek at what I've been up to*, which has mostly been listening to this one Leo Kottke song over and over and over again (which surprisingly, hasn't gotten boring... yet), sketching some ideas, figuring out how to use Macromedia Flash. It's been a good break from work, but at times it's gotten a little distracting. (I'm only now starting to recover from staying up late Sunday night/Monday morning.)

Anyway, I thought I might try to visualize how particular scenes would look by making little flipbooks rather than doing it directly in Flash so I went to Staples and bought a pack of scratchpads for the task. I haven't made a flipbook in ages and it's a nice change (along with the Flash stuff) from my usual pen and ink drawings and pencil sketches -- it's been fun.

So anyway, expect only sporadic posts. Hopefully I'll see you around.

* If you're curious about the Flash stuff, drop me a line and I can send you a link to the work in progress. I don't want to post it because it isn't done and I'm hosting it on my personal site that doesn't have a lot of bandwidth.

I listen to Mike, but he's kind of an dick

Mike-FM is one of those new 24/7 shuffle play stations that boasts about their lack of DJs and makes the claim that they "play everything." Whatever. As far as the DJ thing, yeah, they have no DJs, but they do seem to play a lot of bumpers. This becomes relevant later. And as far as the "we play everything" thing, they play everything about as much as Bob's Country Bunker plays BOTH kinds of music (Country AND western.) It's mostly 80's and 90's rock and new waves with some 70's R&B, disco and saccharine pop thrown in. As I said, whatever. I actually kind of like the mix they play, and when they play something that I don't like or find boring, I change the station. No big deal.

Anyway, you may have heard the news: Deval Patrick won the gubernatorial race yesterday. First black governor for the state. First Democratic governor in 16 years. I'm pretty good with all that.

So on the drive into work this morning, I was listening to Mike, and they aired a bumper congratulating the governor elect. Sort of. Backhanded compliment. I don't remember the exact wording, but it essentially suggested that Patrick won because he spent the most money on the campaign. ("glad to see that money talks" or some such.) I looked it up -- it WAS the most money ever spent by all the candidates on a campaign, but the biggest spender in the end was apparently the Republican candidate, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey. So, um, yeah. I guess some money also doesn't talk.

Yeah, that rubbed me the wrong way. (Duh, if it hadn't I wouldn't be here writing about it 12 hours later.) I thought about it though. I tried to be fair; I tried to rationalize it.

This is America, I thought, everybody is allowed to voice their opinion. Freedom of speech is guaranteed by the Constitution. (And let's not go into all that business about who controls the channels by which people's voices are heard.)

And it's a radio station that prides itself for it's irreverent style, and they're all about courting that world-worn, cynical late-thirty, forty-something demographic sweet spot. Of course, there's this pattern I've been noticing. I remember being annoyed in the past when they had a bumper making fun of Mike Dukakis. I mean, sure he looked kind of ridiculous sitting in the tank with that helmet on, but uh... that was like, what, almost 20 years ago? I think there's been a Kennedy bumper too.

And sure, this state is largely Democratic, so I can certainly understand that if you're going to be making politically-flavored snarky comments (and for the moment, we'll ignore whether or not it's appropriate to be making politically pointed comments in the first place, 'cos y'know, other broadcasters have suggested that you shouldn't cause controversy) you're going to target the people in power, the ones who hold the political majority. But we've had a Republican governor the entire time that WMKK has been around and I can't remember a single snip at Governor Mitt Romney, even when he was off on his Republican roadshow making fun of his "home state" of Massachusetts.

Not much of a point really, just mixed feelings about listening to Mike, although these days, I've been listening to CDs more anyway.

whoops

Playing with flash the evening and now it is about 2 hours until sunrise. Tomorrow is going to be a very long day. *sigh*

AEM06 Day 3 - Still Fighting It

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

I was listening to SUNNY16 on the drive up to work and thought that it might be fun to try and make a video for the song "All you can eat." Not a new idea (that is, I've wanted to make videos before for other songs) but nothing usually comes of it -- maybe an idea for a scene or two, maybe even a few sketches, but nothing more.

But who knows, maybe for AEM. We'll see, we'll see.

I get some propaganda email from amazon later in the afternoon, pushing... Ben Folds transcriptions. Hmm. Keeps Ben Folds on the brain today, at any rate.

Thoughts return to the video. I need to get the song onto my computer, but I've been having issues ripping CDs on my laptop (the last time I tried, the bundled software would only rip to WMV format unless I upgraded... no thanks) so I wandered over to the Ben Folds website to see if there were any free downloads there... and ended up watching videos. I'm a sucker for videos. I hope I can get back on track, but I'm rationalizing now. Maybe something will inspire me at least... and hey, I kind of like the composition from one of the scenes in the video for "Still Fighting It" so I decided to sketch it.

Voila, entry for the day.

As a side note, the title of the song resonates in interesting ways in my brain. It initially conjures up the constant struggle I've been having trying to deal with all the things that need to get done these days. It's overwhelming. And yet, here I am carving out more of my precious time to draw. (And there's struggle there too.) And then to blog. There is no time for blogging and yet ... here I am. Blabbity blah blah. Lots of things on my mind these days but, no time. I have to go to bed. But I recognize the need to create, the need to express. It's food for the soul.

And then the song itself is actually about growing up, or trying not to, and basically failing. And that too is interesting, having wandered over to Molly's site today and read some of her Prego Saucy writings. And I see the change from how she was before. And I've reflected on change and growth and identity. And today it seems that I'm thinking about it in the context of this growing up business that seems to be happening all around me -- new houses, weddings, babies -- all that adult, grown-up stuff. And I recognize that while I'm not feeling old, I am wondering whether maybe I'm doing something wrong, like I got off the bus a few stops early and while I've enjoyed hanging out in these here parts, I wonder if I was supposed to be somewhere else by now. And the question becomes: is another bus going to come along at some point or, to mix metaphors, did I miss the boat?

Honestly, it's nothing so dramatic as that. While things are crazy busy and I've been a little on-edge and cranky, I do think that things are coming together. I am buying a new house. I'm getting married (again). And well, yeah, we're talking about that other thing too.

Ok. It's late, and I gotta get up early for a frisbee tournament tomorrow morning. later.

AEM06 Day 2 - Bad Day at the Office

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude

'nuff said.

And so it begins...

Doodles Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

Kat is doing Art Everyday Month again this year -- do art everyday for the month of November. (I guess that's kind of self-evident.) I really got into it last year but I've been flat-out crazygonuts busy so I really didn't plan on joining in on the fun this year. There's just too much stuff going on. I keep thinking that I'll write a post about the daily breakdown of my day, but there are at least 3 other posts that have been in the draft stage for more than a month, so I wouldn't count on it. Suffice it to say that on average, I have about 5 hours a day of official "free time" which (at least abstractly without any context) seems like a good chunk of time to get things done, but when it comes down to the brass tacks, and I'm cramming laundry, paying bills, exercise, classes and homework into that time, there's not a lot of wiggle room for general decompress time or social time with friends. I've finally started squeezing in time to read the bookclub book (because I've had the damn thing checked out of the library for almost two months), I haven't really played piano since spring. Picked up the guitar for about 15 minutes yesterday, and immediately felt guilty afterwards. So finding time to make art is definitely going to be a challenge.

So what the hell do I think I'm doing?

Well, for one thing, I know that, like exercise, it's good for me. It's good to get the creative juices flowing. In some ways, it's like therapy. I enjoy getting lost in the process, and even more often, the surprise at the outcome. And I think it's good to have something external provide the incentive to keep going once in a while. And really, sometimes I really do just need a kick in the butt to get me going.

The other thing is that it seems like a pretty good exercise to try out my new "failure plan." The explanation for which is in one of the aforementioned languishing draft posts. But if you're curious, you can probably get the gist of it from Steve Pavlina's article Are You a Failure Germaphobe?

Failure germaphobe? Yes, yes I am. And I'd talk more about it, but I've got a bunch of stuff I need to get done before going to bed.

Reflecting on the bad guy

So I'm feeling like I'm a bit more on an even keel today and was thinking about my post from the other day.

First off, I realized that there is actually an exception to my No Money For Phone-Callers Rule: students raising money for school programs, specifically, my high school and college, the college fencing team in particular. I remember the days we had to do an annual "Phonathon" for the fencing team. I hated it, but it was something we had to do (along with other unpleasant activities like getting up at 8am to clean up parking lots after football games) to raise funds, presumably because we didn't have that much funding -- I think the phonathon and gruntwork was actually built into the budget. I never stopped to wonder whether the football or hockey players ever had to do that kind of thing. For some reason, I doubt it (at least the early morning cleanup crew business), but you never know. Anyway, I always remember how awkward it was for me to call up random alumni asking for money so I try to make the process and simple and painless as possible.

The other thing I was thinking about was the whole checkout fundraising thing. I have come to realize that when it comes to people asking me for money, I really would prefer to be left alone altogether. I don't like phone calls, I bitch about spam and I complain about junk snail mail. I guess I find the least obtrusive of them to be the snail mail, but I can understand how that's not a good option for underfunded local organizations. And really, the number of trees that die for junk mail is just absurd and depressing.

So how do these organizations raise money? Certainly my preference would be that they be publicly funded, but I recognize that it's reasonable to be concerned about a government that grows too comfortable spending other people's money, but what often seems lacking in that debate is properly making the distinction between charity and the investment in infrastructure and projects that benefit society at large and as a whole. But the question remains, how does an organization reach the right people who are interested and able to give to the cause?

I was thinking about this when I was checking out at the local Hannaford's where they had little coupons that you could use to donate money for breast cancer research. (apparently it's for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation which supports research and community outreach.) Frankly, scientific (and specifically medical) research does seem to be a perfectly appropriate place for the government to be spending money (seeing as the drug companies seem perfectly happy spending their own resources developing meds to help you keep your hard-on), but that's neither here nor there. The main point is that maybe supermarkets (and other businesses) are the right place to reach people. Certainly, it's a good place to provide information and help develop awareness of causes that are in need of funding. My personal preference would be that they just provide information that I could take with me so I could decide whether or not I wanted to write out a check once I got home rather than hit me up for a buck at the register, but perhaps I'm just not your average bear.

But in the meantime, I may need to rethink my default phone response.

Making myself out to be the bad guy

I have a thing about unsolicited phone calls.

If someone calls me up and asks for money, the answer will always be no. Period.

I don't care how good the cause is. I don't care if they just want me to "pledge" some figure that they suggest. I figure giving in just encourages bad behavior. I'll usually try to be nice, but the longer they persist, the more inclined I become to just hanging up on them.

So, just as I was starting to eat dinner tonight, the phone rang. I was hoping it was the SOOTTAD, but ended up picking up to the voice of a gruff voice asking for a Mr. or Mrs. SOOTTAD. At this point, my brain has already identified that somebody is calling the house off of some mailing list and is preparing to make this person go away:

There's no SOOTTAD here. (this has actually been an effective tool for other unsolicited calls since she moved away.)
"Is this [my address]?"
Yes, but there's no SOOTTAD here.
"What's the address there?"
(ok, so now I'm getting a little annoyed) Can I ask who's calling?
"Waltham Fire Department"

He says something about raising money for this and that and then actually goes off on how he can't read the writing on the sheet to properly pronounce the name (the SOOTTAD's last name) and how he can read his own writing but not this writing on the piece of paper he's looking at and then finally asks who I am.

The conversation takes a serious nosedive at this point, but he does get my name and I learn that the Waltham Fire Department (or rather, what sounds like the local union or lodge) is raising money for Waltham youth sports and some equipment (I think for both the aforementioned youths and the fire department themselves.)

I'm sorry. Youth sports? You mean for the kids I don't have? Like the youth sports that don't let me get permits to use the athletic fields in my town? Those youth sports? [To be fair, I'm actually okay with my taxes going towards schools and generally supporting education and after-school activities. I'll probably have kids of my own someday, but I also believe that it benefits society as a whole as an investment in the future. But that's neither here nor there. Just don't call the house and ask for money. Especially on a Sunday night when I'm eating dinner.]

And if the money is for equipment for the fire department, it begs the question, why doesn't the fire department already have the equipment it needs? Isn't that what my taxes are for? I mean, is this like the whole body armor thing?

And I hate to bring it up, but it really bothers me when public services ask for money. I've had the same feelings when police organizations have called. I'm sure it's a bad thing for me to even mention it, but in the back of my mind, I always wonder whether they keep tabs on these sorts of things and it might somehow affect the response time in the case of an emergency. Crazy, I know, but well... there it is: my brain going off and doing its own thing.

And fire department aside, what is up with all the businesses that are soliciting their customers to make donations for this charity, cause or what-have-you? There are a bunch of little orange cards (presumably shaped like pumpkins and bought for some nominal donation) taped to the inside window of the Staples down the street; the local Shawr's routinely asks me if I want to buy a [name seasonal paper icon here] for a dollar for [insert another good cause here]. Crickey, they even asked me for a donation in the Wendy's drive-thru for some education or children's charity fund. I think once upon a time, when a corporation pledged that they would give a certain amount of money towards a good cause, they'd actually DONATE THE MONEY THEMSELVES, not hit up their customers. Apparently these days you can get street cred by simply getting other people to give money for you. Bah.

But regardless, I hope there are no fires here any time soon.

Learn Chinese

Learn Chinese
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

Heh. Nice timing.

Powerful choices

Some changes can be life-changing. Others, not so much.

Yesterday, I got an offer in the mail to change power suppliers. Dominion (a name that doesn't exactly give me warm fuzzies) is offering to provide electricity to Massachusetts residential customers at an 20% discount to NSTAR's residential basic service rate.

Hey, that actually sounds pretty good.

I guess that deregulation legislation is finally paying off. Almost 10 years later, but let's not pick nits here, some things just take time. It seems like we may actually have real competition here.

...except, that's not their regular rate, it's a special offer; you have to sign up by October 31st. And if that doesn't give you the sense that they want you to hurry up and act now! you might want to take note that they're only offering the rate to the first 25,000 customers who respond. Oh, and the rate only lasts through December 2006. (That's two months for those of you keeping track at home.)

Oh, and supposedly it owns one of the dirtiest power generation stations in the state. Company representatives have suggested that they've made efforts cleaned the place up, (kicking and screaming the whole way, but again, let's not pick nits) and switching to them will support "a company that is working to clean up the local environment through air quality improvements."

There's something to their argument -- it costs money to make those improvements, after all -- but at the moment, given the other issues I have with their offer, I think I'll let my inertia move me, and stay with being disgruntled about NSTAR.

It's too bad identifying another supplier wasn't more straightforward. I mean, the easy choice for me if I had it would be the green alternative from Mass Energy (who I use to purchase my heating oil), but they don't offer it to NSTAR customers.

Oh well.

Lightness against mounting darkness

My only hope right now is that the badness of the recent legislation (can you say arbitrary, unbounded detention and torture?) can be undone, either by the courts or perhaps a more rational legislature. (I hope I'm not being uncharacteristically optimistic or characteristically naive.)

But until then... Free Hugs.

Ceding the floor to Mr. Wheaton

The debate over this has been troubling me for the past several weeks, and has aggressively sapped my spirit in the last day or so. It has festered. It darkens the world around me.

And it feels completely outside of my control.

I don't really like talking politics in the workplace -- I prefer to keep my personal life and my opinions separate -- but I vented with (at?) coworkers during lunch anyway. (It seemed to help a little, albeit only briefly.) I called my Senators; it felt empty, hollow. (Although I appreciate the words Kerry has spoken. But they are just words, not action.) And I feel powerless*. (And however cynical it may seem, I do believe that's sort of the idea.) Powerless and paralyzed.

And then I read Wil's Statement of Conscience:

"What the House did yesterday, the Senate looks to do today, and the President will surely enact as soon as possible, is a direct assault on American values, and contrary to everything our country stands for. Though cynically and cowardly enacted as a purely political tool during an election, those who supported this bill do not speak for me, do not act in my name, and do not reflect my values.

"Torture is not an American value."

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you for giving a clear and eloquent voice to my thoughts and feelings when all I could do was oscillate between sullen hopelessness and seething anger and frustration.

Ok, I'm going to try and pull myself together and get some work done.

*I'm trying to work on some personal growth stuff right now, so this statement doesn't sit well. In my mind, I'm thinking of it as a rhetorical device because I think it's important that I know that I'm not powerless. I have control over my life, and the hard part is trying to navigate how things affect me, how I affect them, how identity is defined and how I define it. And all that.

Late, lately

Late tomatoes
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

The tomatoes have come late this year, partially due to me being so distracted and discombobulated this past spring that I didn't really get a chance to deal with the garden until very late into the planting season (one might say past the planting season, and then not really dealing with it properly), and partially due to an oddly cool and rainy spring and early summer. The melons got a similarly late start, but it looks like they'll be ready before the first frost hits. (Sadly, the yield looks to be about one melon per plant, but hey, I HAVE MELONS!) I did manage to get proper grapes for the first time which was pretty exciting as well as ample carrots and long beans, but we may get only a handful of fruits from the volunteer tomato plants, if they ripen at all. (So far, I've eaten two small yellow pears that ripened sufficiently.)

But, anyways...

I wasn't really thinking about the garden so much as about the general discombobulation of everything right now. I keep planning to post something, but life stuff gets in the way, and by the time I have enough time to gather my thoughts and set virtual pen to virtual paper, the thoughts have gotten listless and wandered off to find something more interesting to do. And once I've stopped writing for enough time, I start questioning whether or not whatever it is that's currently occupying my mind is worth taking the time to sit down and write about it. ...if I could find the time, of course.

So yeah, feeling kinda discombobulated. It was probably just a shock to the system -- the structure and workload vacuum over Labor Day weekend and the listlessness that accompanied it, followed subsequently by the inevitable return of work and the commute and schedules and school and homework and practice sessions, and fall hat starting and... Cat 2.*

Anyway, discombobulated...

We're in the last semester of school, but at the moment, I'm not feeling particularly excited about finishing, I just want it to be done. I'll probably get back into the swing of things, but for now -- eh. It doesn't feel like there's enough time to do the things I want to do, the things I need to do.

Speaking of which, I need to get to bed. Class tomorrow and all.

* Cat 2 was throwing up a lot this year. I was kind of registering it in the back of my head, but it wasn't until the school term was almost over that I actually articulated that he was throwing up pretty much every day. Sometimes more than once.

Vet time.

The diagnosis has progressed from Inflammatory bowel disease to GI lymphoma to possibly some mono-something-or-other to multiple myeloma. In other words, we've been going through a lot of testing and I've been making a lot of trips to Angell in JP, which is a bit tiresome, but still necessary as far as I'm concerned. but hey, I now know how to get to JP from Storrow via the Fenway and Riverway.

So that's been kind of a bummer for most of the summer, but what can you do, y'know? We're just trying to nail down the diagnosis so I can give him the right meds. Things haven't gotten any worse -- he seems to be keeping food down reasonably well and seems alright other than being skin and bones. It seems like he's always hungry which is a good sign, I think.

Fear-mongering + Racism = Irony

And of course, this time it's in the U.S. at JFK:

Man not allowed to board plane until shirt with the words "We will not be silenced," written in Arabic and English, is removed or covered-up.

I'd say we've hit a new low, but sadly I think it's entirely possible for him to have been treated even worse.

Raising my Ire

I have another post in the works, but this news report I caught today just ticks me off:

Mutiny as passengers refuse to fly until Asians are removed

Thank you, you fear-mongering bastards.

Now, not only am I supposed to be afraid of hair-gel bearing terrorists, but now I have to worry about some *other* passengers or, potentially worse, some poorly-trained security drone down the road thinking *I* might be a terrorist if I happen to be checking my watch too frequently or am wearing a heavier coat because I didn't want to deal with a larger piece of luggage. I guess that lack of fluency in another language is really paying off for me right about now. And ditching the long hair, too.

Some Good commentary at The Mahablog.

Ironically, I deleted a post on fear and terrorism and never got back to a post I was going to title "No Escape" on how I couldn't get away from all the recent political bullshit flying around since the Connecticut Democratic Senatorial primary and the latest terrorist plot (and conspiracy theories on the questionable timing of the announcement -- does anyone remember the last time Pakistani intelligence led to a premature raid in the UK? Oh right, Here's a reference, it was about a week after the Democratic National Convention in 2004.)

And for what it's worth, I think it's entirely reasonable that Joe Lieberman is still running for re-election, despite losing the Democratic primary -- he is the senator for the entire state of Connecticut after all, not just the Democrats. Forcing him to withdraw because he's not towing the party line feels like something out of the playbook from some Cold War era totalitarian state ...or the Republican party. Which doesn't change the fact that he's a hypocritical, sycophantic lapdog serving an evil and corrupt administration.

Ok, that's wie-ud

It appears that my last post somehow had enough keywords in it to get it listed on Computerworld's IT blog watch. That's kind of embarrassing. I guess the folks over there need to work on their filtering algorithm.

Pay Attention to me!

*sigh*

So, my office just switched over to a Micro$oft Exchange server for our email. Apparently our previous mail server was homegrown from postfix, and as the company has grown, they've decided that it would be prudent to switch over to a (presumably) more stable, commercially available and supported product to prevent potential problems from popping up further down the road. Cool, whatever. The main guy who takes care of the IT stuff, who also happens to be the lead designer and the primary developer of the verification infrastructure that we've been using (there is also an unverified rumor that he can ride a unicycle while he simultaneously juggles large knives and plays the eukelale), came by my cube this morning to switch me over. He had licenses for a the latest version of Outlook, but it was apparently fine for me to continue using Thunderbird as my mail client -- cool. While showing me the URL for me to get to my email over the web, he tells me that the interface is more full featured if I bring it up in Internet Explorer.

Let's just take a moment for me to mention that I really hate IE. Yes, my working computer is a laptop running XP Pro and I admit that it's much more stable and usable than XP Home ever was. And really, I'm stuck with it because that's the environment that they use at the office. (I've got better things to do than to try and blaze trails and figure out how to do all the things I need to do on some other platform, and besides, they were able to give me a bunch of software for free, that wouldn't have done me any good if I was adamant about running on a mac or on linux.)

I've gotten used to it, but I continue to have bad experiences with all of Microsoft's f'ing "feature"-leadened integrated products, like the last time I listened to a streaming radio feed using WMP and ended up with more pop-ups and random bullshit "enhanced content" than I knew what to do with. I'm sorry, I wanted to listen to music while I was working; do you mind NOT opening up a bunch of fucking new windows -- and switching contexts stupid*grumble*click-to-focus*grumble* -- while I'm trying to get work done here?! And why are you wandering off connecting to all these other websites anyway? I find IE to be clunky, not particularly intuitive, and even though they theoretically have added pop-up blocking, I still don't trust it.

But whatever, I decide to give it a chance and check it out, so I hunt down the path to IE (I've removed it from my desktop) and fire it up. The interface does seem to have more active features than what comes up in Firefox (gee, an interface developed for a web browser that's been tightly integrated to the operating system that has more features than when it's run in a competing browser, go figure. Frankly, it still kinda sucks. And it loses points based on perceived level of difficulty.) Anyway, I figure I'll keep it around and try it out for a while. I figure there's no harm: it's not like I'm going to use IE for any actually web browsing -- I'll just keep it around for email. Seems fine. Although still, having to bring up IE is already strike one, just by default.

So when I got home tonight, I brought up the IE window to check my email. Eh. Still unimpressed. And I still have to log into the VPN, but only in the one window. But even though the interface seems to have more active buttons and folder navigation, I'm not actually finding it any more useful than the Firefox interface. It has the appearance of being more useful, but functionally speaking, that usefulness seems to be effectively zero. As far as I'm concerned, that's strike two.

So I'm surfing around, watch today's show with zefrank. And as I move on to watching "Jon Stewart's Plan for Peace in the Middle East" over at TruthDig I start noticing this strange clicking sound that seems to keep happening every so often.

wtf?

This happens for a while, and it finally gets annoying enough that I have to hunt down where it's coming from. Do you need more than one guess?

I open the IE window and it appears that it's reloading the page about once every ten seconds. And apparently, every time it does this, someone decided that it was important for you to know that it was off reloading the page. So they made it make a noise. Which I can't seem to figure out how to turn off. And it's about as helpful having somebody sitting at a computer next to you with a web browser open to your inbox constantly hitting the refresh button and yelling "HEY, LOOK I'M CHECKING YOUR MAIL! HEY DUDE, I'M CHECKING YOUR MAIL AGAIN! STILL CHECKING YOU EMAIL! HEY, LOOK AT ME! I'M CHECKING YOUR EMAIL!"

Ugh. Shut the fuck up.

Strike three, you're out.

Updates and Observations

Just back from Chicago, visiting the SOOTTAD for her birthday. Great trip, felt kinda stupid flying back Monday morning rather than staying an extra day. I think the idea was that I'd get back into Boston a little after noon and actually get in a half-day's work. It turns out that I probably could have gotten more work done if I had just staying in Chicago and worked remotely -- somehow the flight totally drained me and I ended up just kicking around the house reading a book rather than working -- I'll have to mention that to the senior partner of the group... right after I let him know about my new nap schedule that I'll be taking up at the office. Right.

So anyway, great trip. We ate well: a fabulous meal at Blackbird (although the one bottle of wine and split glass of port totally schnockered us -- geez we are such lightweights) and then another overindulgent frenzy at HotChocolate. I am amused that in both instances, we were complemented by the server on our manner of dining (lots of apps, lots of variety), and only in the latter occasion did it seem like he was being gratuitously obsequious. I would very much like to go back. HotChocolate, in particular, which seemed like the perfect place to just spend a long leisurely afternoon and evening drinking and snacking with friends. Hopefully the SOOTTAD will write something up about the meals sometime soon.

Of course, the whole getting up early thing went out the window with the hangover Saturday morning. And then sleeping in Sunday, was just, well, nice. Maybe I've never really given this early-rising thing a real chance at taking root, but in my experience, I've been able to feel awake: conscious, alert, ambulatory. Whatever. I'm awake. But I don't think I've ever felt rested. Sunday, getting up around 11, even though it was clear that I could have rolled over and gone right back to sleep, it was really nice to feel rested: refreshed, recharged. Sadly, I want more, but I had to be up before 7am to catch my flight, and now I'm back home and I have to readjust again to get up for work. I haven't decided whether I'll try to get back on that horse or just switch over to a slightly more constrained naturalistic approach. We'll see what happens as the week progresses.

Cat2 hasn't been doing that well recently. He was puking pretty much every day and I finally got him to the vet a few weeks ago. The diagnosis came back Friday (right before I flew out to Chicago) Severe Inflammatory Bowel Disease. He's been prescribed Prednisone and Flagyl, which has been a challenge to administer. They're both pills, the Flagyl cut into quarters, and I'm no stranger to pilling cats (Cat1 was on heart medication for a number of years), but Cat2 has an uncanny ability to disgorge pills even when I get them into the back of his throat, which isn't supposed to be possible. (I guess this figures for a cat that was vomiting daily.) The trick? Put fresh wet food in the bowl, pill, hold mouth shut, then distract with the food. So far, so good. We can only hope that his attention span is short enough to prevent him from catching on.

So, recent observations:

• On one of the previous visits to Chicago (a rainy weekend, as I recall) we had noticed several large intersections where the traffic was being directed by the police, even though the traffic lights were still working. They seemed kind of redundant at the time. So on Friday, after exiting the train station, I wait at the first major intersection (Division and Ashland, I think) waiting for the light to change so I can cross. I'm not paying particularly close attention to the lights, just observing the traffic patterns, so it takes me a while to realize that the traffic lights are out. Oh. So basically it's a free-for-all and I just have to pick a moment, go, and hope for the best. I make it across without too much difficulty (hey, I've lived in Boston for 15 years) and notice that the power still seems to be on -- it's only the traffic lights that are out. Huh. And then I see a police cruiser reach the intersection. I wonder if they're there to bring some order to the situation. Nope, they find an opening, cross the intersection and are gone. Huh. Chicago is a very odd city.
• Charlie cards are coming. (Actually, more accurately: CharlieTickets) They were installing new turnstiles at Alewife when I left and they were letting people in free at Maverick when I came back, the old token turnstiles being out of commission (and who knows what was going on at the Airport stop -- the terminal shuttle busses took us to Maverick). I still find it odd that they chose to name the new card system after the character of a song who got stuck on the T and could never get off. And the irony that the song was written as a protest over fare increases and that the new card will actually make fare increases easier to implement is also not lost.
• We learned on our Oakland trip that Jambong (a favorite Korean noodle soup dish we used to routinely get at a local restaurant in Lawrence) is actually a Chinese dish. At least, that's what my Korean friends told me. I wasn't really having any of it since the only places I've had it have been at three Korean restaurants around the Boston area, and zero Chinese restaurants. Well, I had a hankering for Jambong (did I mention the hangover?) on Saturday and well... wouldn't you know it, all the Korean restaurants we visited that afternoon kept telling us it was a Chinese dish. And then one sent us to the Chinese restaurant that served it. (I may eventually write about the experience over at Foodnerd.)
• Tomato plants seem to be growing pretty well. Sadly, they don't seem to be fruiting. They're making flowers, but the flowers are just dying off. I'm not sure if it's because of all the crazy rain or if there's a problem with the soil that I need to address. Unfortunately, not a lot of time to hit the garden store these days.
• The grapes and raspberries, on the other hand, are doing quite well. My only concern is that the critters don't get to them before we can enjoy them.

Bad news for the SOOTTAD

"Blast Furnace Heat Sets In"

She was commenting on the weather just yesterday, and then this morning (up at 0700, go me) I hear on the radio that they're issuing heat warnings in several cities across the country, Chicago amongst them. (And thankfully, not Boston -- here, we only have to worry about tunnel collapse.)

It's not a good sign when your weather makes national news. Hopefully it'll break, or at least ease up, by the time I get there this weekend.