Sparky! And a hawk!

It is my great pleasure (and surprise!) to announce the addition of Sparky to our family. I really have no idea how we went from me looking at cute pictures of kitties at Petfinder.com to filling out an adoption form at the Animal Humane Society. It just happened (like some pregnancies -- LOL!) Doug and the 9-month-old Sparky took to each other right away, and I thought he was a nice kitty, so home he came. Sparky's been living mostly in my office until Bootsie gets used to the idea, and I adore him. Starting about Day 3, couldn't imagine life without him. Today is Day 8. He loves to sleep on my book or keyboard with his head on my hand. Or slung over my shoulder with my hand supporting his bottom. How can I possibly push him aside to work? Cuddling him is a much higher calling.

Need to give equal visibility to Bootsie. Here's a picture Doug shot a couple of years ago, I think. She loves the back windows in summer when the ivy grows over them, giving her a "jungle screen" to lurk behind as she watches the birds and furry critters that visit our backyard. She is sort of OK with Sparky as long as he doesn't try to play with her or enter her domain upstairs. Unfortunately, he wants to do both those things very much. So they're going to be separate for a while.



AJ is very interested in the new cat, and Cubby Bear is absolutely over the moon at having another kitty friend. Sparky was wary at first, but now he has discovered that Cubby's huge brush of a tail makes a great toy.

This summer, we were visited for about a week by a juvenile Cooper's hawk. He perched right outside my office window for hours! I've always joked that my utter lack of care of the backyard and its subsequent run to weeds was an effort to create an ecosystem. Well, I guess it worked! The hawk eventually caught a baby rabbit! Then s/he took off. They like to nest in Douglas firs, apparently, and our next-door neighbor has a beautiful one, so fingers crossed that s/he remembers that tasty bunny and the nice tree and maybe comes back someday to raise baby hawks. Photo below by Gerry Dewaghe.



Otherwise, life has been about working . . . and working . . . and working . . . and . . . Did I mention I've been working a lot? I'm guessing about 70-80 hours/week. So much housework and yardwork isn't getting done, it's not funny. But with the economy the way it is, and the way it's likely to be for a while, I'm not complaining. One of my clients sent me a chilled box of See's Candy for working on a series of challenging projects -- how sweet! Do you know that See's Candy comes with a nutritional leaflet? That's just wrong! It went into recycling unread.

Wrapped up my GRE class for Kaplan Test Prep. Enjoyed teaching very, very much. It definitely got me the interpersonal contact I needed and used the presentation skills that would otherwise atrophy. Plus I met remarkable people and got to know their dreams and goals and maybe help them a little toward them. I hope they all do great on the test!!! Now I am tutoring a wonderful guy, also on the GRE. I hope to teach a class again in November, but that will depend on enrollment. I'm looking forward to fine-tuning my teaching and continuing to improve in my next class.

It hasn't all been work. At the end of August, we did go on a sort of vacation to Kansas City, where we met Doug's parents for a couple of days. Visited some museums, ate some barbeque. I alternately worked and crashed, worked and crashed. Afraid I wasn't exactly the life of the party. I'd lost 5 pounds since May, but I gained 3 of it back over that vacation -- bleh. How discouraging.

Also carved out some time to watch the U.S. Open. Men's champion Juan del Potro seems like a really nice guy with a great game, so glad he won. And Kim Clijsters -- good grief, just her third tournament back from "maternity leave," and she wins a Grand Slam! I remember her as being mentally fragile, but she was incredibly focused here. And now Justine Henin is planning a return. Hurray for women's tennis!

Garden update: Bunny ate most of what would have been a great crop of broccoli, but tomatoes are producing like crazy, despite the drought. (We've had only 0.01 inch of rain so far in September!) Without time to cook, I've been just slicing them up on a plate and sprinkling salt over them.

Birds, Butterflies, and Books

Stepped out onto my front porch yesterday and saw four gorgeous little yellow birds, two a bright, bright yellow, clinging to my Pincushion Flowers (Scabiosa) and delighting themselves with the seeds. American Goldfinches! Two males, two females. As I've been relandscaping, I've been trying to use a lot of bird- and butterfly-friendly plants -- how cool that it works!

Also, about a week ago, saw a beautiful little butterfly on my bed of native yarrow. The undersides/outsides of its wings were slate gray; the topsides/insides were an intense lilac blue. When it fluttered about, it looked like a flower in flight.

Am sick as a dog: Doug went to Origins in Columbus, Ohio, to sell games and brought back a virus with him. He's been sick, too. Bleh. That's really a pain because . . .

I'm currently working on six books with another arriving Monday and more in the pipeline after that. Not a good time to be sick! Just finished editing a book with a lot of organic chemistry in it. I don't know the first thing about organic chemistry, so it was very challenging, but I think that with the help of Google, I ended up doing a good job.

Sarah Palin is an utter flake. Here's just one of the analyses with which I agree; this one is by Ruth Marcus.

When not working, have been enjoying Wimbledon. Amazing women's semifinal between Serena Williams and Elena Dementieva. Amazing quarterfinal and semifinal between Andy Roddick and a resurgent Lleyton Hewitt and co-favorite Andy Roddick, respectively, and then yet another classic Wimbledon final, this time between Andy Roddick and Roger Federer. Being sick, I dozed off early in the fourth set. Woke up quite a while later, saw the score line, and went WTF!?!? and was wide awake. Federer finally won 16–14 in the fifth set. This is his 15th Grand Slam title, and he's now one of a handful of men who have won the French Open (on clay) and Wimbledon (a few weeks later on grass) in the same year.

Funny dog stuff: AJ is perfectly capable of pushing through the swinging kitchen door. She does it from the kitchen side all the time, and she'll do it from the dining room side if I'm standing right there with her. Nonetheless, when Doug is making a snack and she wants to follow him (or rather his food), she never fails to charge into my office, make it very clear that I am to follow her, and lead me to the door, which she makes very clear I am to open for her. Sometimes even when the door is propped wide open, she insists I escort her through it. Funny!

Fun:

• You must view this slideshow at the public radio show Speaking of Faith Web site. A male polar bear encounters chained huskies in northern Canada. The animals proceed to play with each other. The bear came back every day for a week to play with the dogs. Other researchers have observed the same behavior between grizzly bears and wolves in the wild.
• There is a World Worm Charming Championships. It is held each year in Willaston, Cheshire, England. The record now stands at 567 worms. Something to aspire to?
• Therapy chickens! Like therapy dogs, but poultry. This brief article will make you say, "Awwww."
• "Male hummingbirds, swooping in an effort to impress females, achieve speeds 'faster than fighter jets,' [as measured in body lengths] according to a study." Photo below by C. Clark.
  
  
  
  
• Stickleback fish have been determined to use a "hill-climbing" learning strategy. Individual fish learn to find food faster from the failures and successes of their peers. Geez, I could have told them fish do this.

Got Refinanced -- Training Going OK I Think -- Two by Two -- Mini Vacation Soon?

The value of our home has certainly taken a beating in this market, but (a) it had gotten ridiculously high during the bubble and so is now merely reasonable and (b) was enough for us to refinance and get our bills more organized and less expensive interestwise. Plus this interest is tax-deductible. So there is great rejoicing. And the place is mostly clean—wowza!

Had my first "real" training session for Kaplan yesterday, where we spent the whole time doing "teachbacks" -- we teach a section of the test and get feedback. It went so much better than I thought it would. (When I told Doug that, he just rolled his eyes. Then I said, to be funny, "I don't think I flunked," because that's what I said all the way through grad school every time I had a test . . . then got 100 percent. He doesn't understand my insecurities, which is very sweet of him—not to understand why I wouldn't feel confident about my abilities.)

I'm also working on a GRE book for Kaplan Publishing right now, so I'm getting a GRE immersion experience!

Two by two: I saw two bunnies under the birdfeeder at the same time the other evening. That means baby bunnies! Also, last summer we had a small reddish squirrel join the big gray ones we're used to seeing, and the other day, I saw two red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus; see also the U of Mich site here) chasing each other along the fence. That means baby red squirrels! Still not seeing many birds, just the ubiquitous house sparrows, a pair of house finches, a male cardinal, and the odd robin looking for bugs.


Photos © Patriot Plaistow John
I desperately need a change of scenery, and although Doug travels for work, he'd like to get away without working for once. I think we're going to go on a little jaunt to Madison, WI, for a couple of days. Enjoy the restaurants on State Street, cruise the art galleries, walk around the lakes, visit the Oldrich Botanical Gardens . . . As long as we can work our schedules so we can both get away when the weather is good there—it all needs to come together . . .

Haven't updated about the fish for a while. Maybe it's about time for another long, geeky tropical fish update?

It's a bird! It's . . . a bird? It's really a bird!

New clients: I'm happy to add LID Editorial of Madrid, Spain, and Barron's Educational Series of Hauppauge, New York, to my client roster. I'm looking forward to working on a test-prep title for Barron's next month and titles in English for LID Editorial when the firm moves in that direction.

Now about that bird . . .

Doug and I came home from running errands and smelled something bad. "Did one of the dogs throw up?" Doug asked. "No," I said, seeing the source on the floor, "someone made a big doo-doo."

Both dogs are 100 percent housetrained, so if someone doo-doos, it's because of a crisis of some kind, not a breach of discipline. Therefore, we didn't punish but simply grabbed both dogs and got them outside so they couldn't step in it and start tracking it around the house. As I moved through the kitchen toward the back door with the second dog, I heard -- and felt -- the rapid beating of wings.

"What the . . . ?" I yelled.

"Hey, there's something . . . ! Doug yelled.

A sparrow had somehow gotten into the house and was battering itself against the windows in the kitchen and dining room. Fortunately, as soon as I opened the door to push the dog out, the bird beelined (birdlined?) for it and let itself out. So that was simple. No chasing a terrified bird around and around the house trying to shoo it toward an opening.

The bird must have been so exciting -- or so terrifying (both dogs seemed pretty abashed, though that might have been shame over the bad doo-doo) -- that someone lost control. Too bad the cat was shut upstairs. She would have put a quick end to the fun. Bootsie has been a very effective huntress of mice, and I have no doubt she would have nailed the bird.

We've gotten birds in the house twice before, both times in the basement. (This time, the door to the basement was open, so the sparrow probably started there and then came upstairs.) I think we managed to shoo one out. We found the other just before we had to leave for work and didn't have time to deal with it. When we got home, we found a feather on the floor, and the late Gideon had a smile on his kitty face.

Did I mention that this occurred on the coldest day of the season so far? It was minus something Fahrenheit outside, and we had to open the windows to air the place out.

Speaking of weather, we had a beautifully fluffy snowfall that was light to shovel and makes everything pretty. But we're also having some truly frigid temperatures this week: the high today is forecast to be -6F with windchill readings down to -40F. A windchill warning is in effect for the next few days. This weekend, however, temperatures are supposed to get up to 30F, which will feel like T-shirt weather. Seriously! The body can get used to anything, and I'll certainly be taking out the garbage, etc. without bundling up at all when it climbs above 20F.

Fun:

I want to shout out to a few friends who are doing some pretty cool things:

• Thru A Cat's Eyes is just starting up but is already a lovely place for cat lovers to get affirmation and practical advice. Host Catherine "Cat" Holms blogs the antics and travails of her own cats and has started a photo gallery of cute kitty pics. 2153 <== Those numbers are cat Bootsie's addition to this entry. I'm sure they have great significance.
• Congratulations to my friend, the Reverend Lyle Schlundt, who was ordained last year. He is helping with Wonderful Wednesday services at Unity Christ Church in Golden Valley, Minnesota; officiating at weddings; and seeking a permanent ministry position with a congregation. As a certified shiatsu massage therapist, he also works a couple of days a week at The Aliveness Project in Minneapolis, serving the HIV/AIDS community.
• What a pleasure it was to reconnect with high school classmate Everett Howe. We've been out of touch for over a quarter century (gleep!), but whadda-ya-know? In high school, we shared an interest in J. S. Bach and Monthy Python. Today, we share an interest in public radio, indie bookstores, recycling, and off-the-beaten-track music. In San Diego, California, Everett is a professional mathematician working for a think tank on secret cryptography staff, and his wife works for a public policy dialog consultancy. It's ever so cool when interesting people stay interesting!