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Learning the language

On our trip to the Eastern Shore, we were privileged to share a veggie combo pizza with some three-year-olds.

One of them pointed to a black olive and said solemnly, "I don't eat these."

I said, "Too much flavor, huh?"

He said, "Yeah. I don't eat flavor."

Now I'm wondering. I should have asked him what "flavor" is.

Nice

For the past I don't know how long, a helicopter has been transecting the sky over my neighborhood. I assume it's a search helicopter, but the searchlight isn't on, so I don't know if they're accomplishing anything besides rattling my windows. [It's not the police, it's military exercises. I wouldn't go so far as to call it the "sound of freedom." [via]]

Another of life's little victories: The new package of cat food announces "Great new flavor!" and the cats actually agree.

I spent the morning filling out tax forms and writing checks to the US Treasury. Yes, it's quarterly tax time. It's too bad it comes just two weeks after I have to write the really big checks. On the bright side, I got a beer with brunch afterwards and took a nap this afternoon.

This weekend was absolutely beautiful. The air was crisp, clear, and that perfect temperature that people with really overpriced properties and earthquakes get all year. The rosebush is ramping up to its first glorious blooming of the season and is covered with palm-sized pink blossoms. The azalea is blooming better than ever this year (also pink) and Oz is taking all the credit because he put fertilizer on it last year.

So. What else could we do but have Oz dig a ditch across the backyard and trample on the lilies of the valley?

Last winter, when I had my porch floor replaced, I discovered the source of all our moisture issues or, at least, all the moisture issues relating to the house. The chucklehead who put the porch on the house routed the roof's rear downspout to a small, brick-lined hole under the porch, about four feet from the foundation. In one of my intro to engineering classes, we had to convert inches of rainfall and square footage to gallons. Even in a light rainfall, the roof is going to shed a lot more than ten gallons of water, which is about the capacity of that hole. I had assumed, based on some suggestive old photographs, that they had routed the downspout out into the garden where the water might do some good. Alas, no.

Water, while necessary for life and all that, is kind of bad for houses, which is why we use our drainage piping to carry the water away from the house. Unless we are chuckleheads who use a little drainage piping to deposit the water right at our foundation, and then stuff the remaining drainage piping (exactly enough to wrap around the house and carry the water out to the sidewalk) under the porch. Wimpy chuckleheads. They knew what they were supposed to do.

Well, it's done now and I documented the process with pictures that do not lie. The next owner of my house will be so pleased, I'm sure. Oz dug a trench from the downspout and around the front of the porch to where we could run the pipe above ground under a deck and through the alley. He got royally smeared with multicolored dirt in the process. My yard has red clay and rich black dirt in the flower beds, one of which the pipe now runs under.

Me, pointing at the nice flower-bed dirt: "Hey, that's good dirt. I really like that dirt."

Oz, glowering: "It's just dirt."

Now I'm looking forward to the next rain. I want to watch the water coming out of that pipe and flowing away, away, away from my house. I'm also going to get some impatiens and coleus to plant in my nice, black dirt. That flower bed's been fallow for too long. Before Oz dug it up, I rescued some sweet woodruff and transplanted it to another bed. The sweet woodruff is a volunteer, descended from one of the first plants I put in my garden the first spring I lived here. I could maybe spin that into a full circle sort of thing, except that it's not. It's just time to get back out in the garden.

Life's little victories

I have to go to a May wedding. (Another wedding! This is going to be one of those years.) What to wear! It's being held at a farm in Ohio. I'm not sure what the dress code is, but if they're getting married barefoot in the grass, I'm sure as hell not wearing pantyhose.

However, this is a family wedding and the family is a bit on the traditional side. The future is hazy, but through the mists and soft focus, I'm pretty sure I'm seeing a spring dress, pantyhose, and sensible pumps. I fear this means I must face the horror of shopping.

I've been gearing myself up for the shopping. It might not be so bad. I might be able to find something suitable for a lady who is neither a bimbo nor ninety.

Then, this evening I recall that I have a spring dress, with matching lingerie, pantyhose, shoes, and handbag. I got it at the Gap, back when they didn't suck, in 1997 perhaps. The shoes and handbag date back to 1989. I only wore the dress once, for a wedding (what else?) in 1999 or so.

I pull it out of the closet, still in the dry cleaning bag. I slip the dress over my head and button a few buttons.

It fits! It's got a timeless cut so it doesn't look dated! It's cute!

Did I mention that it fits? The cut is also quite forgiving, though since I regularly wear other clothes that old, I shouldn't be too surprised that it still fits.

Oz says, "Oh, darn, you don't get to go shopping."

"No. That's 'Yay! I don't have to go shopping!'"

Our little getaway

There's nothing quite like a long weekend on the Eastern Shore to drive all those half-composed blog posts out of one's head. It's all coming back to me now, though, so I should get cracking.

We went back to Chincoteague, of course. We'd been planning to go back in the fall, but we bumped up our visit after we found that a high school friend of mine is living there now. (I need to think of a pseudonym for her, or ask her to pick one.) We've always wanted to have friends come with us to Chincoteague. The only thing that could make a relaxing barrier island vacation better would be to have friends along. Alas, whenever we've broached the subject, our friends say, "Uh. Well, we've been there already and there's nothing to do." And we say, "Yes! That's the whole point!" We were delighted to find that the perfect person was there all along. As well as her two adorable three-year-old kids and her retired parents living just up the street.

Her parents who are, like, the Nicest People in the World®, stopped by to say Hi. When I said how I was happy to find that they'd retired to my favorite place, they said, "Isn't it great here? There's nothing to do! We've even started watching birds." I said, "Yeah, and the birds here are really large and easy to identify." [I'm myopic. Bird-watching is not my thing, but even I can handle herons, ducks, and egrets.] Later, her mom sent over crab dip. My friend told me, "You rate! I don't get crab dip."

Our nothing-to-do was the usual. We made trips out to the wildlife refuge, engaged in a little fruitless pony watching (ponies not in evidence!), identified the large, easy-to-see birds, and spotted a muskrat, possibly an otter, and one of the endangered fox squirrels. One night we got up in the wee hours to watch a rocket launch from Wallops Island. We didn't see anything because (1) we were looking in the completely wrong place and (2) NASA missed their launch window so no rocket anyway. We were feeling kind of foolish till we learned (2) from the Wallops web site after we got home. I told Oz, "Hey, they're trying again tonight." "Want to go back?" "Tonight? It's in three hours."

Now he wants to plan our next trip around the launch schedule.

Somehow I don't think we're quite back in the real world yet.

Chilly spring

Well, what a week it's been here in Virginia! The mass murder at Tech has been getting a fair amount of coverage on the Japanese news, though the gangland murder (shot twice in the back) of the mayor of Nagasaki, being a little closer to home, has been getting a lot of press. The people of Nagasaki are weeping all over the TV cameras. They seem to have been very attached to their mayor. And that's about all the news analysis I can offer, but asahi.com has more.

But closer to home it's been alternately hiding from the news and trying to find out what happened at Tech. I can't bear to listen to survivor interviews on the radio. Someone down the street lost her brother. My heart just breaks when I look at the pictures of the people who were killed. Having been in school recently, I can't help thinking of my great classmates and professors and what I would have lost if this had happened at VCU, assuming I lived through it. I'm weepy enough at this remove. I keep thinking of how the windows in VCU's engineering building are sealed (No way out there), but at least the doors are very heavy and solid. Still, the rooms are not very defensible because of the interior windows beside many of the doors. I'm used to thinking about security for my house, steel doors and so on, but a public place like a classroom building is simply supposed to be safe.

It's so so sad.

Not a thing

What a nice day. I didn't do a thing. Well, except for mailing off buttloads of money to the IRS. Ouch. April sucks a bit. In a couple weeks I have to mail the quarterly taxes and make a retirement contribution.

Another pack of work arrived today. It's been a lovely week and a half without pay, but there's nothing quite like taxes to improve my attitude about working.

Something else I did: take Sparky to the vet for his shots and a weighing. I knew that was going to be bad news. Before we left I was even hunting around for a hand truck to help me move the cat carrier. (No luck.) Besides, every time I pick him up I think, "My god, has he gotten bigger since yesterday?"

It seems the answer to that is Yes.

His weight has gone up about 13% over the past year and he now weighs 18.2 pounds. I put him on diet food over a month ago and it's the other cat who's losing weight. The other cat was a little chubby too, so that's all right. Oz says Sparky just needs a kitty elliptical trainer … to lie on.

Hah.

But maybe a treadmill …

A fine kettle

I'm developing a healthy respect for the people who do product photography. You know, the unexciting photos of items for catalogs and advertisements. It's harder than you'd think and you need a lot of technique, gear, and experience.

I don't have much of any of those and as a consequence, I've taken many bad photos of my old kettle.

I really like this old kettle, but it isn't usable any longer, especially since the cats knocked it onto the floor and the whistling bit (the cap for the spout) fell off and disappeared. We got a new (better) kettle a while ago and I've just been keeping the old one around because … It's really old. It's the kettle my family used since I was a kid, maybe even before, but I wouldn't remember that.

I like the shape of this kettle, a copper-bottomed, stainless steel West Bend. It's a simple, straight-sided cylinder, banded by two pairs of thin, decorative grooves. The sides bend inward a few inches up and rise in this low, perfect, mid-twentieth century curve to a flat top. The handle is a two-legged arc of black plastic, maybe bakelite, and is molded to fit my fingers. T-R-I-G is stamped vertically into the side of one of the handle's legs. This kettle is (was) a trigger model with a red trigger at the index finger position which, when pulled, lifted the whistling bit so you could pour water out.

Oz hated this kettle. The trigger mechanism was wearing out. The spout was the only opening so the kettle couldn't be washed out. He was convinced that the inside was all rusty and nasty. It wasn't. I used a flashlight and looked inside. Since the kettle was only ever used for boiling water, it was probably the cleanest place in the house.

And today I photographed it. And photographed it. I used different drapes, fiddled with the speedlight on and off the camera, held up a white sheet around the camera to cut down on the reflections, and so on. All to no avail. What I like about my kettle is not showing up in the pictures.

Now the kettle is sitting on my dresser. If I can't get a good picture of it, I suppose I'll just keep it and stick flowers in the spout. Someday I'll figure out how to show you what it looks like to me. If you can't wait, you can buy almost the same kettle, only in much better shape, on eBay.

[Also, since all the other kids are doing it: Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007. Lately I've been thinking about Player Piano. I read most of his books when I was living in Japan. As an exchange student, I couldn't afford to buy books so I was at the arbitrary mercy of the English collection in the third sub-basement of the Keio University library. Luckily I found lots of Vonnegut and an odd paperback by Kilgore Trout. Tokyo was surreal at the best of times. Tokyo on a Vonnegut bender? Think about it.]

Clutter and dust

I hope some translation work gets here soon. This housework is going to kill me.

Today was one of those days of Brownian cleaning and tidying. Every time I thought, Ah, now I'll sit down and read for a while, I would immediately get up and either throw something out or clean it. And yet, after all that work, the house does not look appreciably better or cleaner.

Tomorrow I get to do it all over again, plus laundry.

I'll be glad when the cold snap is over and Oz can put all his potted plants outside and give me the illusion of decluttering. When he moved his plants over last spring, they all went out in the yard for the summer. I had no idea the sheer volume of vegetation until he brought them inside in the fall. Pot after pot, plant after plant, this never-ending alien parade took over every horizontal surface in the house. The cats were excited ("Woo! Salad Bar!" *nibble* *nibble* *barf*), but me? Not so much. A few houseplants under someone else's care are lovely, as well as more likely to live than if I'm expected to water them. Jungles, however, belong outside.

I think I can speed up the cleaning and tidying process if, instead of cleaning things and putting them away, I simply throw them out. Does that sound threatening? I doubt my keepsakes are quaking in their boots. They know me too well.

Well, it snowed. And there was a bike race.

Standing around in the cold waiting for others to exert themselves for one's entertainment is exhausting.

Also, it snowed overnight on Friday. I didn't think it would because I no longer believe the forecasters when they get all excited about the barest hint of a chance of snow, or a big storm, or whatever. So I didn't heed the warnings and completely forgot about throwing a sheet over my hydrangea and its juicy new leaves. Saturday morning found me, before coffee even, standing outside in my slippers and bathrobe and sub-freezing temperatures, picking snow and ice off hydrangea leaves. I tried using a broom, but that knocked the leaves off the bush, which pretty much defeated the purpose of removing the snow.

After I gave up on the shrub and downed some coffee, it was time to go back outside. The 2007 U.S. Open Cycling Championships were coming right through the neighborhood. For the tail end of the men's Williamsburg to Richmond race, they were biking in on Route 5, up through Libby Hill Park, then looping through downtown and back to the park. Eight times.

I bundled up, inadequately as it turned out, and walked down to the park. On the way, I shot a few not-too-exciting pictures of snow on dogwood blossoms, snow on wisteria blossoms, and snow on azalea buds. I got to the park a little after 10:00. They had a Jumbotron set up so we could watch the race in progress. The Church Hill Association was having a bake sale (I neglected to bring money, so no muffins for me). People, dogs, and babies were playing in the snow and practicing their cowbell ringing. The sun came and went. We waited and watched. The footage of the race through the central Virginia countryside looked really pretty, what with the snow on the trees. The cyclists didn't look all that happy about it, though, especially when they were getting blasted with snow.

Thanks to the snow, the race started over an hour late. Much of the morning looked like this:

Oz was sleeping in. I called him to let him know where I was. He moseyed on over to Chimborazo and called me. "Wrong park, dude!" Then he moseyed down to Libby Hill. I had a good spot picked out at the top of the hill. I used Oz as a windbreak for a while. Other photographers with big cameras and press credentials showed up and tried to edge me out. Someone from engineering school walked over and we caught up for a bit. The wind kicked up and low clouds rolled over the river valley. White stuff was in the air. "Are those flower petals?" "No, there were flower petals before, but that's snow!" "So much for the Easter bonnets and little dresses."

Finally the sun came back out and the leader appeared.

Then the rest of the guys appeared.

Cowbells were rung, hands were clapped, and kids stopped saying, "Can we go now?"

Photos were taken by all and sundry!

We watched the circuit through downtown on the Jumbotron and watched them come up Libby Hill for the second time. Then we split for coffee. I think I spent the rest of the day trying to warm up.

Lady of Leisure

More like "Lady of Chores."

No work in the in-box (Oh wait, is "in box" one word now? A brief digression says, No, it's hyphenated.) and I'm keeping busy by getting all the things done that I've let slide.

This is exhausting. I'll be glad when more work arrives and I can be a slacker again.

I have even more to do than I thought. When I called the Princess this week, she said she and her new husband would like to come down to Richmond sometime this month for a visit. Suddenly the mess that is my house became much more obviously messy. Things are cramped enough that they will have to stay at one of the B&Bs in the neighborhood, but I still need to be able to offer them a clean place to sit down and non-scary sanitary facilities.

(I think the point of the visit is so she can show him the house where she lived as a child, the community center pool where we had swim team, her schools and stomping grounds, etc. Seeing as how he's already done the same thing to her, it's time to get some of her own back.)

Pictures that have been leaning up against the wall need to be hung. A towel rod needs to be replaced. Things which have suffered feline depredations need to be de-depredated.

Ugh. (On the other hand, we do need to get things fixed up around here. So what if the incentive isn't because we live here and should make it nice for ourselves?)

At least I can stake the cats out for the buzzards and cut down on their damage. I got two new purple leads, a tie-out stake, and a new purple harness for Sparky who had outgrown his old one. Monte Alban still fits into his. The purple matches the violets which are in bloom right now. Years ago I used to tether the cats out in the yard years. I stopped because they picked up fleas from the grass and I was concerned about them interacting with the alley cats who came into the yard. But we have flea stuff and the alley cats don't come around so much anymore. Amazingly enough, the cats still accept the harnesses.

They are liking the yard. They stalk bugs, nibble on grass, and bask in the sun. Some things startle them, though. When I was weeding today, I moved one of the big black drainage pipes which have been lying on the grass and Sparky flipped. Literally. He did backflips at the end of his tether, hissed, and hid behind a flowerpot. A bit later I moved my bag of weeds at the same moment a bee buzzed over his head and—freak! He ran and hid behind another flowerpot. He is, by the way, rather bigger than those flowerpots.

Hmph. Ferocious jungle cats indeed!

It's supposed to snow tonight, with a few inches accumulation. I'm looking forward to putting them out in it tomorrow. Maybe they're really ferocious Arctic cats.

Yes, snow in April! It's been a long time since that happened. On Japanese news tonight, they had a piece about the weird weather they've been having lately, including April snow. I thought, Yes, when I was an exchange student in Tokyo, there was snow on the cherry blossoms. Yuki-zakura. Then today's newscaster observed that it had been 19 years since the last April snow. That was 1988, my year in Japan. Could it have been that long ago?

Free range kitties

Are they more tender and juicy?

My cats have always been indoor cats and now, in their crotchety and demanding golden years, they long for the open air. They are entirely unsuited for the open air and the outdoor cats who will kick their asses if they go out in it, but they don't know that.

And it's springtime. The time to call out to the wild, or at least whine to it.

The whining was too much for me today. Sparky sat by the screen door and yowled, and moaned, and yodeled for hours to be let out. He has quite the vocal range and some of the sounds he makes don't sound like they should be coming out of a cat. I think he's trying to speak English when he says, "Ow-wow-wow-ow." If he could make a "T" sound, he'd be saying "out."

I thought, If I let him out, he'll shut up. And then I thought, Any time he spends outside is time he can't be peeing on the rug. And then I opened the back door.

Sparky sat on the doorstep and yodeled a little more before he got a clue and stepped outside. Monte Alban wafted downstairs and asked to go out as well. Sparky immediately went exploring under the porch and around the perimeter of the yard. He went through a gap in the fence and explored the fenced-in backyard of the house next door. Fortunately, he didn't go through a gap in that fence to check out the world beyond and instead came back. Monte Alban just hung out and grazed in the grassy spots.

I kept an eye on them to make sure they didn't stray. I also kept watch for the local outdoor cats whose arrival would have signaled an end to the idyll, what with the ass-kicking, blood, and flying fur. All was peaceful. I had quiet, well-behaved outdoor cats for maybe an hour. They even mostly ignored each other until Sparky started hunting Monte.

Sparky: The ferocious jungle tabby stalks the gray shadow beast!
Monte: Leave me the fuck alone, nutjob!

Of course, in cat it's more like:

Sparky: *rustle* *rustle* *slink* *stalk* *attempt to hide behind a leaf*
Monte: *HISS*

Hmm. Time to go inside. I distracted Sparky with a piece of grass and encouraged Monte up to the back door, then hoisted Sparky into the kitchen.

Maybe tomorrow we'll do it again.

Brunch

Today we tried a new breakfast place that we've been meaning to try for a while. The food was good, the service was fast, and we didn't have to wait for a table. Lo! Brunch was had. (An omelet. A tender omelet. Also, waffles.) The place had the look of being busy enough to stay in business, but of not having been discovered by the groover crowd (hence the available tables).

We want it to stay that way too. So. I won't tell you where it is.

This is not an April Fool's joke either.

Take heart, though. Maybe the joke's on us and the place which shall not be named is actually packed with a line out the door on all days but today.