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.

It rained! And I fixed the pipe! And the plants still live!

Graduated from Kaplan teacher training! Really looking forward to teaching. It'll be fun.

Now working on a book to help high school students prepare for the Advanced Placement exam in U.S. government and politics. I follow policy and politics pretty intently, but it'll be fun to see how much of the formal knowledge I remember from high school.

The big news of the last few weeks has been my battle to keep my 100+ baby plants alive despite (a) no rain and (b) no working garden hose. We're somewhere between "moderate drought" and "severe drought." (The Drought Monitor map, as well as the other info at this University of Nebraska—Lincoln site, is pretty cool.) The threads for the hose to screw onto had corroded so badly, no amount of Plumber's Goop would keep it on, plus there were leaks from the spigot and another connection. Duct tape actually worked for one watering per wrapping before it fell off -- duct tape is awesome. I ended up hauling more water than I want to think about one 5-gallon bucket at a time. Have I mentioned I'm not big in the upper-body-strength department?

I read up on taking apart old pipes and flinched every time I encountered the words propane torch. Finally at the crack of dawn one morning, I ventured out with my midsized pipe wrench in hand to see what would happen. The bad section of pipe came right off! Doug dimly remembers, and I think I do too, that we had the same problem shortly after moving into the house and had our handyman at the time fix it. If the pipes had only been together 17 years instead of 71 years, that would explain why they didn't act as though welded together. A quick walk down to the corner hardware store for replacement parts and plumber's tape, and it was all fixed and worked great!

And it finally rained last weekend -- over an inch! Lovely, lovely, lovely steady soaking rain!!!!! I could feel the waves of relief coming from the plants -- I swear I could.

I don't think I lost a single plant to lack of water.

Now the big news is that I think I'm going to have over 30 tomato plants. Yikes. So here's what happened. I got 6 beautiful heirlooms from the Friends School Plant Sale. Then Jung Seeds offered a collection of 16 sweet pepper plants at a great end-of-season price, and they came with 16 tomato plants. (I think I didn't read the fine print very closely. I was just excited about the peppers.) Then, weeks ago, I tossed some old tomato plant seeds in the ground in case one might germinate. Well . . . a whole bunch just came up. Yikes. If they all grow and fruit and the rodents and dogs don't eat them, I'm going to be begging people to accept bags of tomatoes!

Seem to have a soil fungus -- verticillium -- afflicting my dogwood tree, causing all the leaves on one branch after another to wilt. Hopefully, I can prune it back and save it. Hopefully, it won't infect all the barberry that covers the hill starting 15 feet away. If it does that, I will cry!!!

The Emerald Ash Borer has come to Minnesota. Its larvae have started killing ash trees in St. Paul. Our block has lost quite a few elm trees in the last ten years, and the city forestry department chose . . . yup, green ash trees to replace them. I don't find the trees that attractive -- I could take them or leave them -- but I really don't want to lose the time it takes to get mature trees lining the street. The ashes are just starting to be a mature presence and offer a smidgen of shade. The critters are really pretty; it's a shame their larvae are so destructive.

Fun:

• Well, it's not fun that she died, but it is fun that I learned about her: Koko Taylor, "Queen of the Blues." What a voice! What a career in the male-dominated world of blues. How cool that she performed shortly before her death at age 80. Must acquire her recordings.
  
• Sharks in captivity can learn visual and audible signals to know when it's their turn to come to their trainer and eat. Some can even be picked up and cuddled after responding to the cue, knowing that food will be the reward. This article says the "brightest sharks" will be trained in three months. Based on what I've seen of my tropical fish, I doubt it will take that long; when it comes to food, fish can be pretty quick on the uptake.


• The news is that fingerprints don't increase the surface area of our hands and don't increase friction when we grip things, so that's not what they're for. But what I found fascinating is that New World monkeys have "tailprints"; that is, ridged areas of skin on their prehensile tails.


• I'd embed this, but you really have to watch tennis full-screen to follow the ball and get the full enjoyment. Here's a "greatest hits" compilation of French player Fabrice "the Magician" Santoro running his opponents around the court and hitting shots between his legs to win points. Roger Federer breaks into a grin at one point as he's being pulled from net to baseline to net . . . Fun stuff.


• Cute Nike ad celebrating Roger Federer's 14th Grand Slam victory, which tied Pete Sampras's record. He won the 14th at the French Open, held on a clay (crushed brick) surface, which was the one major he'd never won; thus, he also achieved a career Grand Slam at the same time as tying the record.
  

I was on fire last week!

In addition to having two new clients (see my last post), I'm excited about a prospective new direction that will combine some of the knowledge I've gained from freelance editing work and certain skills I honed in the human resources field. And that's all I'll say for now. I'll know a little more at the end of March.

In the meantime, I just wrapped up work on a fascinating book that's a series of true-life stories by pediatricians about their work, some of them deeply meaningful and moving. Plus, I'm working on a couple of books for educators that address diversity of brains and cultures, respectively, in the classroom -- a topic I always love to read more about. Last week, I finished a test-prep book for the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test). So lots of variety, as always.

Now about that fire . . . I set the tea kettle to boil on the gas stove and reached up to grab a tea bag from the shelf over the stove. I felt the heat of the stove against my hip. I dropped the tea bag into my cup and relaxed, prepared to wait until the water got hot. But I noticed that the warmth, instead of fading, was becoming downright intense. I looked down and saw flames on the hem of my T-shirt. I quickly moved to the kitchen sink and shoved the cloth under cold water. The T-shirt had a 3" square hole in it. It was my Caesar's Palace shirt from last year's Vegas trip -- not a favorite shirt, but not a shirt I wanted to burn a hole in, either. The pajama bottoms underneath were only slightly singed, and my skin was untouched. This seems like the kind of thing that happens to elderly people -- setting oneself on fire. I'm not elderly, even if I do feel creaky some days.

Speaking of creaky, my ankle-nerve thingie flared up again for a couple of days last week. Not sure why. It was probably due to using the exercise bike, but I've been using it without the ankle acting up. Maybe I had the tension set a notch higher? Anyway, I clumped around in my big plastic "boot" (cast) for a couple of days, and it got all better. Having this thing, I totally get why people who don't know about nerves would think invisible demons or a pin in a voodoo doll was attacking them. That's what it feels like.

Been reading Tony Horwitz's A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World -- great stuff about the first Europeans who came to this hemisphere (hint: they weren't the Pilgrims). He structures his narrative such that it's part history, part travelogue, and part contemporary sociology, simultaneously exploring the past and its impact on our present. By the way, every American and everyone who wants to understand America should read Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic. It's a brilliant exploration of the American Civil War and its continuing reverberations in the national psyche.

Been watching figure skating at the U.S. National Championships and tennis at the Australian Open. Regarding the former, I am thrilled that Alissa Czisny won the Senior Ladies event (click here for photos of this beautiful skater). Regarding the latter, I am grateful that Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer are giving us so many great matches, desolated that Federer did not win, and grateful that I can come back to U.S. Central Time after partially transitioning to Melbourne time. Ah what the heck: What do time zones mean when the earth spins continuously on its axis?

Fun:

• Local metereorologists were getting pretty excited a couple of weeks ago about snow rollers nearby. When the snow is sticky and the winds are strong, the wind can "roll" the snow into shapes like bales of hay. Here's a picture of some snow rollers.
• You can Obamicon a photo of your choosing. The website, put together by Paste Magazine, lets you apply the style of the famous Shepard Fairey Obama poster to any photo you want. I used it to great effect on a photo of Angel (the late Rottweiler). Then the site stalled out and I wasn't able to save it, but I'll definitely give it another try. She looked . . . presidential!
• After a few years away, I've gotten hooked on the Washington Post's Crickler puzzles again. Fun!

Some R&R (Over Now)

And I have now complained several times about how hot it’s been. Fortunately, the weather is gorgeous this week. I can stop worrying about my plants shriveling up.

Finally got my "spring break." Every year in the spring, copyediting work dries up for a while. This year, I got about two weeks off. Enough to recharge my batteries; not enough to get worried about my income. Just right.

Read a couple of really good books. One I can highly recommend is In the Woods by Tana French. It’s her first novel, and it won an Edgar Award, and it’s awesome. The characters are deeply flawed. One mystery is solved, but others remain unsolved and justice is not all that one would hope. The characters pay an enormous price for their involvement in the case. The friendship of the male and female homicide detective partners is one of the best male-female relationships I’ve seen rendered in fiction.

Watched a good bit of Wimbledon. The men’s final--Roger Federer versus Rafael Nadal--was one for the ages. Wow. I’ve been a Federer fan for years but only this year started appreciating Nadal’s game. All I wanted from their final was a five-set match of amazing tennis, and I got it. Someone had to win -- no ties in tennis. How long ‘til the U.S. Open?

Attended CONvergence. My five panels went well. Enjoyed the Art Show very much. Hung out at the Diversicon party for a while and watched The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, a fabulous spoof of 1950s SF B movies. It takes real talent to write dialogue that bad on purpose!

Also played in the dirt with my plants.

Now I’m back to being hard at work. Just finished editing a really good book about careers in nursing -- lots more options than when my mother became a registered nurse. Now working on a couple of books for teachers working with students of diverse abilities and a book on how to bring a specialty or gourmet food to market. Since I worked for two and a half years at the Wedge Co-op, the specialty food book is pretty interesting -- talks about a lot of the products we sold from the producers’ point of view. How does that organic honey-mustard get developed and made in large batches that all turn out the same and packaged and labeled and shipped anyway?

Fun:

NYTimes columnist Gail Collins writes about vampire chick lit. The whole column is worth reading, but I particularly enjoy the quotes from a Twilight Saga book: "He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare ... A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal." "Incandescent chest"? Really? "Scintillating arms"?

Also in the NYTimes, an article on a rural Albanian custom whereby women become the "men" of the family. They cut off their hair, wear pants, and foreswear marriage, and in return they get treated with all the respect and honor accorded men in their society. Really interesting!

DeadProgrammer's Café explores the genesis and evolution of the Starbuck's logo. Explains how a buxom mermaid could be of more use to a sailor than just as eye candy.

Fascinating history of photo tampering from the 1860s up to, as of this writing, July 2008: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/.

Great Moments in Procrastination offers, um, great moments in procrastination. Bored people in offices come up with fun games to avoid doing work and so forth. Lots of fun videos. Just viewed "Office Jousting," in which four office workers create a RenFest or Society for Creative Anachronism event using office supplies.

On a more serious note, David Frum offers a realistic view of our next White House in the Prospect magazine (U.K.).

And now on an outré note, here is Edward Gorey's fabulous ABCs book, showing one child after another meeting a grisly fate in a horribly hilarious way: The Gashlycrumb Tinies. And here is an Edward Gorey TrueType font available free under creative commons license.