Frenzied Daddy

We had our oldest cat pass away night before last. She was older than Malkin, but it was still sad. I don’t have any pictures of her- I just spent the last 30 minutes going through my digital photos and there are none of our tan and white shorthair kitty, so you’ll have to use your imagination.

We got her at the Humane Society in Eugene. For most of her life, she was our “fat kitty;” she weighed about fifteen or so pounds. Most of that was hair; she’d shed at the drop of a hat. She loved everyone, but she hated the outdoors. Once, when we lived in an apartment, we had to evacuate both cats for a flea bombing. Sienna spent those six hours hiding under a chair on the porch, crying.

Over the last year or so, she’s taken to sleeping in Miss B’s room, hiding from the other animals and from Miss K. She’s gotten very thin and frail, and we knew she was aging quickly. She liked being warm. When I came upstairs yesterday, she was laying in the living room gasping for air. I took her to Dove Lewis, and found out she was having congestive heart failure and that she had a lot of fluid in her abdomen. She’s sleeping easy now.

One of the lessons I’ve taken away from something I read, regarding my relationship with Ms B, is “when guys talk about problems, they’re looking for solutions, whereas when women talk about problems, they’re looking for community.”

Talk about your vast generalizations.

However, I can tell you that this generalization is frequently true in my discussions with Ms B, though; when she complains that she doesn’t like the food I’ve made for dinner, she’s not really asking me to go to Dairy Queen and get her chicken strips (well, not always), but she’s asking for reassurance that she’s not crazy; worchestershire sauce makes tuna casserole taste funny.

So then I read this…Programmers Don’t Like To Code (short summary: programmers like to solve problems, not to code). Combining these two generalizations … is this why the stereotypical computer programmer is male?

Yes, yes I know they’re all total generalizations. But are they linked?

The girls looking for sticks

Originally uploaded by rgilmanhunt.

… is taking them for a long walk in the cold cold rain.

The newest batch of pics I’ve posted to flickr will be from a hike I took the girls on today. They were seriously tired and cranky all morning, and I was beginning to sense that Ms B needed a break. I needed one too, but I figured I’d get a nap when I got back.

We went to Forest Park for a walk. I love Forest Park, and today was ice-cold. It was so cold I had to hold my breath when I took pictures because I didn’t want the breath-fog in the photo. We went across the St Johns Bridge and down Highway 30 for a little bit. At about the Arco sign, just as you enter Linnton, there’s a little turn around behind a bus shelter. The trailhead is behind there.

Miss K cried the entire way in the car, but when I stopped the car and took her out at the trail head, she got real quiet. She kept saying “big” and “wet.” It was definately wet. We had a lot of mud and muck. Miss B kept talking about how the scenery reminded her of how she imagines Terabithia. She’s been reading Bridge to Terabithia in preparation for the movie’s release, and she walked along naming various features. “I’m going to name this tree ‘Green Bark’.” … “That tree is ‘Witch’s House.” … It was precious; reminded me of myself at her age.

Miss B picked up a stick, a small barkless smooth stick she termed “Ivory wood- it’s pretty, and strong, and it’s used by elves to make their arrows.” She was washing it off in the little creek, with Miss K looking on, very intently. She (Miss K) put her hand gently on Miss B’s shoulder, and watched as the stick got clean, and then she announced she wanted a stick too. So she found a stick (bigger, hairier, and more bark), and washed it off in the stream just like her big sister. It was cute neat touching to watch their bonding moment.

We saw some terrific rotten stumps serving as “nurse logs” for smaller trees. You can see the roots of the younger tree over the rotten stump, down the side and into the dirt (not just into the log.) There were a lot of mossy tree branches; Miss B was startled as a loose piece of moss dropped out of the tree in front of her and drifted silently to the ground. There was a very small waterfall, and there was some neat places where the creek had washed away all the dirt and just ran across a flat piece of rock; like a rock bed made of one single rock. There were trees with mushrooms, moss, ferns and ivy growing on them; it was really pretty.

There’s some parts that are steep too; but even the two year old made it up and down them without slipping and getting all muddy. Don’t recommend this trail for wheelchairs or canes (but the Lower Macleay trail would be fine, for a little bit).

I’d never heard about BA flight 009, and how it fell from the sky. I love to travel, I like to fly, and I want my kids to have the same love that I do… but not to the extent of my brother and I pestering the flight attendants for olives (when we were unaccompanied minors). I don’t know how I’d react, though, if Miss K and Miss B and I were on a plane and all four engines quit.

I hope my pilot and crew would be as skilled as these; and I’d hope that we were so lucky.

I can only imagine that I’d be snapping pictures like a fool of the glowing wing and some of the worried faces in the plane. What a memory.

color with me ?

Originally uploaded by rgilmanhunt.

We first got Ms K’s color wonder markers, we were going to save them for the Disneyland trip. We decided, after she decorated herself with a ballpoint pen, to go ahead and give them to her. Now she will carry them around looking for someone to color with her. She has many books; they fill up quickly. I actually wound up hiding most of her completed books- she’d open them all up and look for new pictures to color.

When we first got them, she would point at a picture and command us to “color!” Now, she’s learning to color by herself, or next to someone else. She’ll still tell people to color, but it’s more companionable now.

Dragon Smiles

Originally uploaded by rgilmanhunt.

Ms A and Ms L brought our daughters a stuffed dragon, as big as Miss K. Miss B likes to have Miss K on top of the dragon, and then picks her up and spins her around as if the dragon were flying.

Miss B is really Miss K’s most favoritest toy ever. Look at the love between them. We all suffer when we have to seperate them. We work really hard to keep both of them happy- sometimes it’s good that they play together so much, but sometimes the 10 year old Miss B needs some personal space.

Kind of like parents.

Woo-Woo!

SCI FI Channel unveiled a new slate of programs in development, which includes shows from executive producers George Clooney, Darren Star and Mark Burnett. SCI FI made the announcement Jan. 12 at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour in Pasadena, Calif.

Diamond Age, based on Neal Stephenson’s best-selling novel The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book), is a six-hour miniseries from Clooney and fellow executive producer Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Productions.

When a prominent member of society concludes that the futuristic civilization in which he lives is stifling creativity, he commissions an interactive book for his daughter that serves as a guide through a surreal alternate world. Stephenson will adapt his novel for the miniseries, the first time the Hugo and Nebula award winner has written for TV.

(emphasis mine)
source

And to go on from that short blurb; there winds up being two copies of the book. One is, of course, given to the daughter mentioned. The other falls into the hands of an impoverished young woman who doesn’t know how to read (the book adapts and teaches her). It has some great imagining of how nanotechnology could transform our world (both as a lethal weapon and as a tool for construction). It’s actually the second of Stephenson’s books I read, and confirmed my enjoyment of his combination of the technical and the fantastic.

keithblur

Originally uploaded by rgilmanhunt.

This is the man who gave us our laundry back. Thanks to this man, my family is once again in clean, non-stinky clothes.

Now, I have a much better picture of him. But I wanted to ask a question… WHY is the center of this picture out of focus? The doorjamb and wall look great (behind him). I’m reasonably sure I wasn’t too close for the camera’s focal length.

I have cavities just from looking at these pictures.

What an awesome way to spend your Christmas Break; by creating a huge “gingerbread” display of the battle of Helm’s deep. Yeah, there are some detractors (“dude there were no catapults at Helm’s Deep”, “Dude there were no elves at Helm’s Deep” ) but they were working from the movie version of the battle. And what they accomplished was awesome. My favorites have to be the catapults. But he says in today’s post that he wishes “they made gummi bears with sufficient, magnificent stubble, so Viggo could have really been portrayed.”