Sense and Missense

Photography immersion

2009-03-28T15:18:00.000-07:00

California poppies, and a crazy slow shutter/fast focusing technique I tried.

I haven't been very good about writing blog posts lately. I've been busy being mad at the unfairness of life (I know it's pointless, but I can't seem to stop) and doing more physical therapy exercises (I'm doing better physically due to the latter, thank you). I've also been learning more about photography and trying to pick up tips here and there. See, at the beginning of the year I failed to make resolutions per se, but I did decide that I would try to get better at photography this year. Photography makes me happy, and I could use more of that. It helped that a professor visiting our lab for the year from Scotland is also a keen photographer, so we often discuss photography. Since the digital camera era has made a lot of people interested in photography, I thought I'd share some of my favorite websites/podcasts/videocasts that have been helping me learn more about the technical side of photography in case it can help any of my readers--I know three of you (Genevieve, Kirsty, and Kim) are somewhat interested in photography and the other two (that's you, Ian and mom) aren't, but maybe someone else with an interest in photography will come across my mediocre blog in time!

A hallway on the campus where I work.

The thing I've been spending the most time on is listening to the old podcasts of TWIP (This Week In Photography) on my iPod Shuffle while running and eating lunch, trying to catch up to the current show (I have a way to go--they've been putting out ~1 hour podcasts once a week for over a year). I subscribed via iTunes so you can search for it there. They (the people of TWIP) also keep a blog that has additional information and also the show notes for the podcasts [UPDATE: try this blog (Photofocus) and this blog (TWIPlog) instead--they moved and diverged a bit]. The podcast is basically a round table discussion of photography news and tips, with the "panelists" being a group of respected photographers and digital perfecting/manipulation types. I am impressed by the breadth of experience of the panelists--I think they were well-chosen because they each have different specialties and thus as a group they have a wide spectrum of viewpoints. My favorite person on the show is one of the original two hosts (he seems to now have have been replaced as a host by one of the long-time panelists for the podcast, but still has a lot to do with the blog): Scott Bourne. As a host, he's pretty good at keeping things on track and I like his direct, practical attitude. Apparently, a number of people (listeners) have issues with him--they don't like the way he flaunts his wealth or his "hard-assedness" that he displays in managing the comments section of the blog etc. But whatever, it doesn't bother me and what's more, I like his voice. I am not alone in liking the TWIP podcast--it is apparently #1 for photography podcasts. The podcast does have quite a bit to do with raving about new technology but even though I don't have the paycheck to keep up with the Joneses in that regard, I find I learn interesting technical stuff when they start discussing the new products so that's okay.

Some bacterial colonies that I grew as part of my experiments. See, bacteria can be pretty!

In TWIP, they talk about Flickr a lot (TWIP runs competitions through Flickr and also has a critique forum etc. there), so I did try to give Flickr another chance by uploading more of my photos and trying to spend more time wandering through other people's photographs there, but I still am not a fan of the Flickr format. For those who don't know, I do the bulk of my photo displaying over on smugmug. Yes, I have to pay for it and Flickr is free, but I like smugmug better and it acts as backup storage for my photos. If you'd like to sign up for smugmug too, you can use my coupon code (on my smugmug page) and get a discount, and that will also earn me a discount on my renewal... and that would be the first money I'd ever get from photography ;-)

An unusual plant I encountered on a hike.

Okay, what else? A couple of people from Kelby Training recently started a videocast called D-Town TV of tips for Nikon cameras, so I've been watching that. The problem is that my camera is 5 years old and they only focus on the newer Nikon cameras. But, it's only about 10 minutes a week of my time to watch it and it's teaching me the cool things that newer cameras are capable of... downside to that is that it makes me want a newer camera!

An awesome flower (in South Africa).

As for Kelby Training itself, I have watched the (free) introductory lessons to a few of their courses (you have to pay to watch the rest of the lessons for the courses). I haven't yet paid for them because you pay by the month for unlimited courses and I don't have enough time to squeeze in enough of the courses to make it worth it. Also, a lot of their classes are about using Photoshop and I don't care about that (since I don't have Photoshop). If at some point I find myself with lots of time, I will watch all the Joe McNally videos (mostly on artificial lighting--not something I use a lot, but I think it is interesting) and the Moose Peterson ones (wildlife and landscape--my favorite genre of photography is Nature). I was particularly impressed by the Joe McNally introductory lessons so I'm glad that he makes appearances on D-Town TV too.

By the way, if you're interested in flash (and especially off-camera) lighting, this is widely viewed as an excellent site for it: Strobist.

You might also want to read Thomas Hawk's tips for newer dSLR camera users.

A lizard on the campus where I work.

Before this year, I'd basically never edited a photo... I assumed that if I put in enough thought at the time of shooting, I'd never have to worry about editing. Well, now that everyone says you should take photos in RAW format (vs. jpeg), I gave that a try and realized my photos didn't look very good straight out of the camera anymore. My sister then informed me that if you shoot RAW, you basically have to run it through some software to get it to look good (when your camera processes the image to spit out a jpeg file, it does some behinds-the-scene stuff to the image to make it look "better"). So I went back to shooting jpegs while I did a bit of research on software. I'm not about to spend big bucks on Photoshop, and a couple of the guys on TWIP seem to use Aperture a lot, so I've downloaded the trial version of that to give it a try (other people on the show use Adobe's Lightroom, but I like Apple so am trying Aperture first. You can apparently also get a free trial of Lightroom). Both Aperture and Lightroom help you manage your photo collection (I'd been using Apple's iPhoto for that) and allow quite a bit of image adjustments, just not as much as Photoshop. To help me use Aperture, I've been watching the tutorial videos for it on the Apple site. Rumor has it that Aperture 3.0 may be coming out in the next couple of months, so I won't be buying a license for it until I hear more about that (it was a very sketchy rumor I heard second-hand, so if anyone finds this blog by searching for Aperture three-point-oh, you are in the wrong place to find out when it will be released).

I altered this photo with iPhoto! I changed the exposure and contrast, I think, and I like it better than the original. It's of Snoqualmie Falls in Washington state.

As the TWIP panel regularly mentions, writers become better writers by reading, and photographers become better photographers by looking at other people's photos. To help me with that, I subscribe to a couple of professional photographers' blogs: Phil Colla's Oceanlight, and Ron Niebrugge's Niebrugge Images. There are many others out there, and for many other genres. Many wedding photographers have their own blogs, so if that's what you're into, you could try those.

Grass at Lake Murray, taken after sunset with my 50 mm f/1.8 lens! Amazing that it could let in so much light with a reasonable shutter speed.

All the above has improved my knowledge, but has it improved my photography? Probably not a lot yet, because I haven't been taking enough photos lately! I do think my photography has improved in the last year though, but it happened before I got so into reading/listening to all the above things. First, for my trip to South Africa last year, I stopped using the "Auto" setting on my camera after reading my camera's manual and discovering all the things the "program" settings (like "landscape," "portrait," "action" etc) do. Earlier this year, I took my camera to lab a couple days and went and took photos of whatever during my lunch break, but had my camera set to "Manual"--took me back to the days of using my manual film camera and reminded me of all the things I'd forgotten! On Manual mode, you have to adjust the aperture and shutter speed and ISO settings until the exposure is good--takes a lot of fiddling, and makes you pay attention to your camera settings. Then, the first day that I went to see the desert wildflowers this year, I focused on aperture settings (the aperture in my lens, not the software)... I put my camera on aperture priority (what most pros seem to use for most of their shooting) and then watched what happened to my photos when I changed the aperture. That was a very good experience--helped me get a better feel for what changing the aperture accomplishes besides letting in more light. The next time I was out in the desert, I focused on focus (hee hee). I realized from the aperture day that blurry images just aren't good ;-) So, I recommend reading your camera manual and not using the Auto setting, if you still do that.

A ladybird on a flower that I took a photo of on the day I was focusing on focus.

By now, you're probably thinking I'm getting paid to plug certain products or productions :-) If only... then maybe I could afford some of the photography gear on my ever-growing wish list!

I have a blog?

2009-03-28T14:55:00.000-07:00

Oh, yeah, it looks like I do! Oh oh... it's been a while since I wrote anything! Hmmn. Will have to think of something to write about. In the meantime, here's a photo of how I feel:

Photo diary of the last few days

2009-01-11T19:36:00.001-08:00

I'm going to work backwards, since that's the order my photos loaded in :-)

I made a knitted kitty, inspired by an ex-roommate of mine, Jodi, and with a pattern from another person's blog (if you don't like swearing, don't go there).

To take the photos of the kitty last night, I decided I should practice using my fancy flash off-camera (my camera can remotely control the flash). I couldn't remember how to do it, so I got out my camera manual, my flash manual, and did a google search and finally got it, as this test shot (while sitting at my computer) shows. You can also see the manuals in the background.
Yesterday afternoon, Jesse and I went over to a coworker's house to watch a football game. For those of you who know me and Jesse, you'll know we are not the football-watching types. But, we decided it would be fun to give it a try. As I'm working backwards here, I'll start with after the game--"our" team, the San Diego Chargers, lost, but we sat on my coworker's deck and enjoyed the sunset and city lights.
I made yellow and blue cupcakes with blue or yellow frosting. My advisor's daughter (my advisor's significant other (and father of the kid) was at the party, though my advisor was not) took quite a liking to the cupcake frosting... she licked the frosting off of four cupcakes, and only then took a nibble of one of the cupcakes (but never ate the rest of any of them). Here she is licking, and you can see another licked one on the table.
Here are the cupcakes I took to the football watching party.

Before we left for the football party, I had a little photo shoot with Alice as she sat in some autumn-colored leaves I collected on Friday (more on that towards the end).

And here are the leaves, that I photographed separately on Saturday:

Okay, now we're at Friday, the day I collected the leaves... I sat outside when I ate my lunch because it was such a lovely day (sorry to everyone who lives somewhere that wouldn't be a possibility in January). The leaves are finally starting to turn colors and fall off trees here (took some getting used to when I moved here!). I ended up picking up a whole bunch of the leaves since I thought they were so pretty, and when I got back into lab, I tied a rubber band around them to keep them as a bunch. I happened to have my camera in lab, so one of my coworkers and I had a bit of fun. Here I am throwing my bouquet:
This photo was actually taken as a test shot as I was showing my coworker something, but I am putting it in so y'all can see where I work... my desk is at the very back on the right (you can see my desk chair pushed back) and my bench, where I keep my reagents and equipment and set up some of my experiments is in front of that, where my stool with my gray jacket is. Lab's are cluttered-looking places.
My coworker took a self portrait, and I really like how you can see another of my coworkers in the back.
Me posing with the coworker you could see in the back of the previous photo.
I put the leaves on our light box to get a back-lit shot through one of the leaves.
Here's my bouquet on the over-turned lid of my ice bucket (we put ice into them to keep reagents cold on our benches, when necessary).
And there you have it.

Vegetarian "French" Onion Soup (with apologies to the French)

2008-12-30T22:49:00.000-08:00

Vegetarian "French" Onion Soup

Ingredients (this is already a double recipe... I like leftovers)

1 stick butter

2 Tbsp olive oil

4 lbs onions (was 5 large ones for me)

1.5 l vegetable stock (that's 6 cups... original recipe called for 1.9 l, but I like my soups a bit thicker. Though it was almost a bit *too* thick this time... just add more water at the end to get it to the consistency you want)

1 cup sherry (very dry) or white wine

Salt, pepper

And if you want to be good,

1 loaf French bread

gruyere cheese

maybe some parmesan

Method

1. Put on your onion goggles. Take a self portrait.

Onion goggles, to prevent you from tearing up. No joke.

2. Peel onions. Cut in half then slice thinly in food processor

3. Heat butter and oil in large pot over medium heat and add onions

The onions at the start. These photos don't do the large size of this pot justice. For scale, my hands fit in those handles on the sides.

4. Cook onions for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally

5. In that 45 minutes, there are many things you can get done. I...

- fed Alice some canned food

- made myself a sparkling cranberry drink

I had leftover cranberry concentrate from Thanksgiving and leftover Club Soda from a silly bet I made and lost (long story). I poured about 1/6th of a glass of cranberry concentrate then filled with Club Soda. Yummy! I had seconds.

- folded a load of laundry and moved another load into the dryer

- unpacked the dishwasher

- opened my long-awaited Kiss My Face package... I needed face wash and lotion and they sent my an email saying that everything on their site was 50% off! I've been using hand soap to wash my face...

I'm *so* excited! The box smelled lovely when I opened it.

- checked email

- cleaned up the onion peels

- put away my CSA vegetables

Just don't forget to stir those onions occasionally!

The onions at 20 minutes... there's lots of liquid, but the onions have wilted a bit.

The onions at 30 minutes... less liquid.

The onions at 1 hour. Yes, I did say 45 minutes (and you can't cheat and make it shorter than that... you need the onions to caramelize slowly), but mine didn't look quite ready at 45 minutes... I think the heat was on too low at the beginning.

6. When onions have turned a lovely shade of golden, add broth, sherry, salt and pepper. At this point, I realized I had only about 1/4 cup sherry in the cupboard, so I used Marsala for the rest. It's not the same, but when else am I going to use that Marsala (like the Sherry, I bought it for cooking, but no recipes seem to ever call for it now that I have it!)?

Yummy soup goodness simmering away.

7. If you're being good, you'd slice up that bread now, top the slices with cheese, and broil them til the cheese looks extra yummy. Then you'd put a piece in the bottom of each person's bowl. If you're bad like me, just heat up whatever bread you find in your freezer first (in was Nan/Naan for me! Way to mix ethnicities!) and maybe smear some butter on it or something. 'Cos if you're like me, you don't just have gruyere lying around. And you would have decided to make this recipe when you got home a bit early one night and thus hadn't planned for it.

8. After about 30 minutes (or 10, if you're like me and just want to eat while watching The Tenant of Windfell Hall, episode 3 (of 3) on Netflix Instant Viewing and don't really care), scoop some soup up and pour it into the bowl over the piece of bread with gruyere. The bread should float to the top, but get soft enough to eat with a spoon. Serve.

Okay, so I hope at this point you understand that while this is a perfectly yummy recipe, I didn't really post it for the recipe itself... I just wanted to show off my new onion goggles (Christmas present from Santa--thanks mom and dad!). Did they work? You bet they did!!! My eyes didn't water at all. But, the onions made me sneeze and my nostrils weren't too happy--haven't ever noticed that effect of onions before, but I'm guessing that because my eyes weren't watering, I stuck it out in the kitchen longer than I normally would have, so that meant my nose got it worse than usual. Or, they could have been particularly potent onions... please don't call animal cruelty on me, but this is what Alice looked like when I went to check on her:

Is that the saddest thing? I immediately went and opened the door to our deck, even though it was cool outside, and got Alice to come sit in the fresh air by playing with her. Her eyes got better in no time, thankfully! I didn't remove my goggles until the onions had been cooking for 30 minutes. Do they make cat-size onion goggles, I wonder.

December 1995 South Africa trip, take 2

2008-12-28T21:37:00.000-08:00

Um, so this is a bit embarrassing... turns out I also had written a journal entry (in prose) in the same book for my 1995 trip. What I typed up earlier was just my bullet-points list. So I'm going to try again.

13 December 1995

7:42 pm Seattle time [written while in an airplane]

Well, here I am on my way to a new continent: S. America! São Paulo, Brazil, to be exact. I am $400 richer, have a $14 airport meal in my stomach, but am losing at least 15 hours of precious time with friends and relatives in South Africa.

My story of the last 48 hours is enough to write a short story on. I will start 48 hours ago: I was in Seattle, in my apartment, recovering from my Microbiology final exam and thinking about getting down to studying for my Physics final. The rest of the night was fairly uneventful. My roommate, Jason, brought a few (female) friends over, and Genevieve and I ended up keeping two of them company while Jason flirted and had chocolate syrup fights in his room with the third young woman. [G and I shared a 3-bedroom apartment with Jason, who I think we had met in the dorms the previous year, for two quarters. Then G moved out and joined a sorority for half a day, but that's a different story, and maybe G should tell it :-) ]

On the morning of the 12th of December, at 8:30 am, I started writing my Physics final. At 10:30 am, I was done. I went and accepted gifts from my work colleagues and shared a grad. student's birthday cake with the lab. By 12:30 pm, I was on the Ave depositing a paycheck and finally, after literally months of looking, buying myself a new pair of athletic shoes and they were on sale [note to Samantha of the past... you should have spent more on athletic shoes, and you should have bought new ones more often... those shoes wound up causing you a lot of foot problems when you took up running a couple of years later].

At 2:30 pm when I returned to me apartment with the rain and wind just starting ahead of the major wind storm, the fire alarms had just started to go off. We all evacuated the building; Genevieve had been in the shower when the alarms went off, and so had to walk outside with conditioner still in her hair. [G, do you remember that? I didn't.]

Eventually, that was over too. At 3 pm, my dad was supposed to pick us up to take us down to Olympia. At 4 pm he still hadn't arrived but we got a phone call from my mother: my dad had been in a car accident. His car had been hit from behind and he hit the person in front of him, who hit the person in front of him, who hit the person in front of him-->5 cars! [hmmn, this sounds familiar. Didn't I just write that?] My dad's car was the only one with major damage. He has a large triangular dent in the back of his car, so his boot (trunk) doesn't close and his back bumper is now held on with bungie cords [I totally forgot about the damage to the boot... I think he managed to "fix" that and get the boot closed by drilling holes in the back of the car, attaching a piece of wood or something from behind it with screws, then attaching that to a rope attached to my mother's car... then he drove my mother's car slowly forward to pull the bent metal on his car out... clever dad! Another problems was that the back driver's side door was a bit tight... and he fixed that my adjusting the hinge. Good as new! Except for the accordian-like scrunched metal under the carpet in the boot.] His front bumper is slighted damaged. He was jolted hard enough that he broke his seat and his neck was hurting him. However, he tied up the car and came to pick us up at 5 pm [I'm impressed!].

When we got to Olympia, we found that the power at my parents' house had been out since 3 pm that afternoon. Luckily, we had a little propane car-camping stove, so we had warm canned corn, some rice, and spinach for supper. Then I remembered--I had 2.5 weeks' worth of dirty laundry that I wanted to do so I could take some clean clothes and underwear to South Africa with me. But, there was no power. So, by the light of a propane lantern, I packed my dirty clothes into a suitcase. Our water heater was well enough insulated that there was warm water for a shower [thank goodness! Imagine starting a holiday with a suitcase of dirty clothes AND no shower!].

After waking at 5 am this morning (Wednesday of finals week), we headed off to SeaTac. There was a lot of tree debris in the road from the windstorm, but luckily nothing to prevent us from getting to SeaTac. Our plane left only 30 minutes late, and we had a pleasant surprise when we found our assigned seats in the business section--yes! There was SO much leg room! The flight to New York was about 4.5 hours and was uneventful. We could see the Cascades as we flew over them and they were beautiful!

We arrived at JFK airport in New York at 1:55 pm Seattle time. Our next plane was supposed to take off at 3:20 pm Seattle time, so we didn't have long. Genevieve and I ran to catch a shuttle bus to our terminal in 29 degree icy New York weather. We got to the South African Airways (SAA) counter at about 2:20 pm, Seattle time. They told us they were still processing seats so we would have to wait. (Dude, fly American Airways--they give you the whole can of whatever you are drinking--TWA only gave us a cupful! [Well, the mention of TWA (that we took for the Seattle-NY leg) dates this a bit, doesn't it! And I've since discovered that getting the whole can is a hit-and-miss thing in general]). So, wait we did... with about 50 other people. Now is a good time to mention that we booked our tickets from New York to Johannesburg 8 months ago. Two months ago, we confirmed the tickets and my South African grandmother paid for them in full [sweet Ouma].

The story behind our wait started to emerge: the plane sitting at the gate was smaller than they had expected it would be, so there wasn't enough room on the plane for all of us [I now wonder if that was really true, or if they had simply overbooked]. They were taking us in order of check in and handing out boarding passes. Our pack of milling, angry, frustrated and frazzled people thinned down with time: at 3:30 pm Seattle time, there were 16 of us left. Sixteen people who had bought tickets, but for whom there was no space on the plane.

We were told that we were each going to be compensated $400 and they had got us onto the next-quickest set of plane flights to Johannesburg. We were each given a free phone card--we used the 3 minutes of international calls on one to phone our friend in South Africa who was supposed to pick us up at the airport, and the 12 minutes of domestic calls on the other to phone my mom, as we had promised. Anyway, so at 7 pm Seattle time, we were told there was a flight to São Paulo, Brazil, and after a 5 hour layover there, a flight to Johannesburg. Total extra time: 15 hours.

In May of this year, when I was registering for my fall classes, I registered for an 8:30 am Physics class that messed up my day by meaning I had to insert work [as an assistant in a research lab... I worked ~20 hours a week during the quarter there, and full time in the summers I didn't take classes] between classes, just so that I would finish my exams two days earlier so we could get on the Wednesday flight to Johannesburg. And then, I didn't even get the flight. But, look on the bright side: $400 compensation (the whole trip, 6 flights, cost $2300 each [YIKES! I didn't remember that it was that much. My flights this year, also 6, cost $1600. So much for flying getting more expensive]). I get to see South America for the first time, albeit from an airport window (if I leave, I would have to go through customs). They also gave us a voucher worth $15 at a deli down the hallway. You don't get change for what you don't use, so I got a $6 sandwich (you wouldn't have known by looking at it), two $1.50 bottles of mineral water, a $2 pecan roll, a banana (I don't know the price) and a $1.50 apple/cranberry drink--just short of $15! [Is it just me, or do those prices sound like they're not that much less than what you'd pay now?]. We also found out how rude and unhelpful New Yorkers (at least those working at the airport) are.

Now, here I sit on the plane to Brazil, in economy class but with a seat free next to me, and a window to sleep against when I need it. Genevieve has the same (she was assigned the seat next to me, but there were two seats two rows back that were open, and the nice steward invited her to move there).

So anyway, I have one less night in South Africa now, and another 5 hour (PS turned out to be 7) wait in an airport coming up tomorrow morning (and even more airline food--yuck!). Oh! And on this flight, they gave us a toothbrush, a little bit of toothpaste, a hair comb AND the movie is going to be "A walk in the clouds", which I have wanted to see for a while (edit: it was "Free Willy" [and "A walk in the clouds," which I must have seen some other time was pretty silly anyway]). AND I get to listen to a lot of Portugese being spoken. Ooh--turbulence.

Signing off, Sam, 8:40 pm Seattle time.

[Strange... I think I write essentially the same now as I did then.]

Egg substitutes

2008-12-28T16:43:00.000-08:00

Another piece of paper I found in the pile:

Substitute for 1 egg when baking:

1/2 of a very ripe banana

1/2 tsp ground/milled flaxseed in 1/4 cup warm water, stirred until gooey (it really does start seeming like egg whites, and this provides omega-3 fatty acids without needing to eat fish)

1/4 cup applesauce

I've never tried the banana, but I do use the other two options with great success, especially applesauce in sweet breads, such as banana, zucchini or cranberry-apple, that I make entirely vegan (the applesauce helps make and keep them moist) and flaxseed as a partial egg substitute in brownies (I just cut back the number of eggs and substitute flaxseed for the missing ones). I wouldn't try them in cookies or pumpkin pie filling... just don't think they'd do as well in those. But, please let me know if they work for you in other things.

Enjoy.

December 1995 South Africa trip

2008-12-28T12:07:00.000-08:00

I discovered right after posting the last entry on my 2008 trip to South Africa that I had just typed up my last real journal entry! After that, I more took notes in my journal rather than writing stories. I may still try to turn those notes into stories some time--we'll see! In the meantime, I am cleaning off the top of my bedroom dresser today. It is where I keep a lot of paper. It has gotten a little out of control. I found this in a notebook, and wanted to record it so I could throw away the paper...

In 1995, my sister and I went on a trip to South Africa together. The getting-there part was a bit of a nightmare. Here're my notes:

Background

~April 1995: decided to make trip; ordered tickets

~May 1995: planned Autumn 1995 class schedule so that final exams would be before the flight [G and I were undergraduates in Seattle at the time, and we specifically planned our Autumn quarter schedule for the final exams to be finished as early as possible, to give us more time in South Africa before we had to be back in Seattle for the beginning of the next quarter; I took an 8:30 am physics lab (I found that to be a bit early for 3 hours of physics) because the final was earlier for that section than for the 11:30 am one]

12 December 1995 [the day my dad was going to pick us up in Seattle to take us to my parents' house, so that they could take us to the airport the next day]

8:30 am: final exam in Physics 122

10:30 am: to work; Noel's birthday; presents from Sally and Terry [I was working as an assistant in a Toxicology research lab... Terry was my big boss and Sally and Noel were graduate students]

12:30 pm: to Ave [street in University district]... cash paycheck, buy shoes and leotard and aerobics pants and waterproof shoe spray at Big 5 [a sports store; I was a big aerobicizer back in those days]

2:30 pm: get to apartment, fire alarm going off [this was a bit of a problem as my dad was supposed to arrive at 3 pm to pick me and my packed luggage up... I needed to get in so I could pack!]

4 pm: phone call from mom... dad has been in an accident, but would pick us up at 5 pm [this was the accident that turned his Honda Accord into his Honda Accordian... he was hit from behind while stopped at an offramp light... he hit the car in front of him, which hit the car in front of it, which hit the car in front of it (that's 5 cars total)... his car was a bit crumpled, hence its new nickname, and was later deemed a right-off by the insurance company, but he bought it back from the insurance company for $150 (in addition to getting the $2000 for it's value when it was written off) and that car kept going as my sister's car at least until she sold it when it had >250,000 miles on it... quite the car]

4 pm: wind really starts blowing... "Windstorm of 1995"

5 pm: dad picks us up in damaged car; traffic good to Olympia

6:30 pm: arrive in Tumwater [where my parents lived]; power is out [due to wind storm], can't do 2.5 weeks' worth of laundry

That evening: pack my dirty clothes by light of torch and propane lantern

[Perhaps we should have given up here?]

13 December, 1995 [day of flight]

5 am: rise and shine

9:30 am: take off half an hour late from SeaTac for New York... in Business class though [about the only thing going well!]

2:15 pm Seattle time: get to SAA desk in New York [we hadn't been given boarding passes for the New York to Johannesburg leg in Seattle so had been told to go to the ticket counter when we got to NY]... a big crowd of people there that got smaller as names were called and people were given boarding passes... wait and wait to get our boarding passes

-->plane takes off without us because the flight was overbooked [never mind that we'd got the tickets 8 months earlier]

-->get $400 voucher [the tickets were about $1600 each, I think]

-->get $15 meal voucher: one sandwich, two waters, one cran-apple juice, one pecan roll, 1 banana =$14 [and a very rude cashier--I understood then what people said about New Yorkers being gruff]

-->told our luggage has been lost, presumably left on the tarmac in Seattle but they have no record of it after we checked in

10 pm: plane to São Paulo, Brazil [the airline rerouted us through Brazil and Argentina to get to South Africa... we were supposed to be on a direct NY-Joburg flight]

14 December 1995

11 am Brazil time: arrive in São Paulo (11 hr flight). In transit lounge until 6 pm

15 December 1995

11 am South African time: arrive in Johannesburg from Brazil via Argentina (~11 hr flight with ~1 hr in Buenos Aires). That's ~7 am Brazil time.

Well, we made it to South Africa (a day later than planned), and our luggage did make it a couple of days later. We got to see the Amazon jungle (and its destruction) from the sky and breath South American air for the only time (so far) in our lives. There were 16 people who were re-routed through South America, and all of us had our luggage lost, so G and I weren't the only poor saps. There was no SAA representative in the airport in Brazil for the first ~4 hours we were there, so the 16 of us banded together and managed to get a cafe in the airport to give us as much free food and drinks as we wanted... and before that, since cans of Heineken (beer) was the same price as cans of soda (US$2), G and I bought Heinekens to drink (we were both legal drinking age in Brazil, but not in the USA). There's a photo of us in the lounge with a can of Heineken somewhere.

Let me recap the things that went wrong:

-fire alarm kept me from my apartment for a while when I needed to pack

-dad in car accident on way to pick us up in Seattle

-power outage due to wind storm=no laundry, had to pack by lantern

-8 hours wait in New York, diverted through South America, 7 hours in a transit lounge in Brazil, 1 hour sitting on tarmac in Argentina while they cleaned the plane

-our vegetarian meals were on the wrong plane, so I actually ate a bit of chicken (last time I intentionally ate chicken; I had been a vegetarian for over 7 years at this point)

-luggage misplaced for a few days

But most importantly, over a day of our precious holiday time was lost! We also had to go shopping for underwear etc. when we finally arrived, since we didn't have our luggage. I think our holiday was supposed to have two weeks in South Africa total.

We had a good time in South Africa at least. And the flights to and out of South America were fairly empty, so G and I had a few seats to ourselves.

Perhaps some other time I will write down the story of how I got 2 hours of sleep before my Wisconsin graduate school interview because of another travel horror story.

A letter about a childhood

2008-12-11T21:31:00.000-08:00

I totally forgot to post this back when I was writing about the Hermanus phase of my trip. While in Hermanus, my aunt Anne shared a letter with me. The letter was hand-written about nine years ago to my grandmother from one of her childhood friends. While there, I typed it up and had my cousin Diana send it to me. I feel a bit like I am intruding on someone else's privacy by posting this, but I think it's so lovely that I want to share it and I don't see that it will do any harm.

*****
13 August 1999

Dearest Cathy [my grandmother]

My eyesight is not too good so I do not enjoy writing--I hope you can decipher this letter. I have been telling my family what you and your family meant to me so now I have decided to tell it to you.

I remember the details of your dad’s tidy garden, the fruit and rose trees all pruned and the trunks white washed, the grape vines that we climbed in and the grenadillas [passion fruits] below the water tank.

I visited often for morning tea. We had bossie [bush... I assume rooibos/red] tee [tea] made with hot milk and lovely rusks [kind of like biscotti... for dunking into tea]--at Sonop [the name of the writer's family's house--means Sunrise], if we children were hungry, we found raw sweet potatoes in the shed under the tank!

I remember your mother so well--I remember the pincushion on her dressing table that looked like a piece of watermelon--black pips [seeds] and all.

She covered your Topsy doll regularly--new beady earrings and all. Do you remember the sweets [candies] she used to make--the peppermint syrup that she pulled as soon as it was cool enough to handle--when long enough, she cut it into sweet-size pieces. The other sweets she used to make were reddish brown and had peanut in them.

The storeroom key was attached to a piece of smooth wood. The smell in that store room was heavenly! Especially the dried peaches [funny--I loved the smell in my grandmother's store room, when she had one. She kept onions there, for one thing].

Because you were the middle child, I was taken here and there with you to keep you company--I remember going to the Findleys in Sunnyside--I remember coming back from Johannesburg with your family one evening. You mother was trying to get Elise [my great aunt... my grandmother's sister] to sleep when I mentioned all the car lights. Of course Elise sat up to look--you can be sure I was not too popular!

I remember details in the house--the photographs of Ben and Rene’s children with their pink cheeks and blue eyes--And the photo of the Catherine after whom you were called--it was the Titanic in which she drowned, was it not [actually the Lusitania, I think]?

I remember the cosy atmosphere in front of the fire in the sitting room when your dad used to melt lead to make sinkers for his fishing. I can still see him pouring the lead into the tiny mould and before it cooled down, he put in a small hook.

When I was 6 and you 5, I spent a whole month at Hermanus with you--I remember the mussels, the seaweed jelly and the penguin eggs--And Voelklip-the rock from which your dad fell and broke his nose! You had to practice your music before we were allowed to play. I used to sit on the stool with you and we sang all the songs whilst you played.

Your Edison records and the diamond needle was the great attraction--with you I really loved the operas--music I never had at Sonop--The other night on TV, I looked at the Great Caruso with Miro Lanza--it was then that I decided to get hold of you.

At Sonop, we never had any family life--we hardly ever saw our parents--we had meals with a nursemaid--the only real family life I knew was at your place--Do you remember the mosquito nets and the citronella oil?

I hope you can read this--all my love--we had lovely times together when we were young.

Love, Eth [Ethelwyn]
*****

Lovely, hey?

PS. The photo at the top is one of mine... I used some iPhoto tricks to give it an older style 'cos I thought it fit the mood.

11 September 2008

2008-12-07T21:05:00.000-08:00

11 September 2008

Apparently there was frost on the roof of the Kalahari Trails lodge this morning and it was 1°C out, but it didn't feel all that bad to me. We had a breakfast that finished off the guava juice and milk and got on our way. After ~10 minutes, I realized we'd left the rest of our stuff in their fridge, so we headed back to get that. The rest of the drive to Upington was mostly uneventful except for all the birds that dodged our truck--I hope they were all successful. Oh! On our way back to retrieve our fridge goodies (a soaking wet Cadbury's bar and bag of apples), we almost hit a Roller [type of bird] of some sort--probably a Lilac-breasted Roller--that was sitting in the road. We both thought it was a dove until the last few seconds, then it took off and just missed our windshield. We hadn't seen any Rollers well while in the park, but I had briefly seen one flying next to us on our way to Mata-Mata. Jesse may have seen one other, but the one in front of the windshield was the best for both of us.

The front of the main house at Kalahari Trails.

We got to Upington just before 11 am and thought we'd see if Neil [guy who rented us the 4x4] would still refund us a day's rental as he'd said he would if we brought it back early (we were 1 h into the 7th day). He readily agreed, and also refunded us for the freezer/fridge not working and didn't care that the battery case was shattered and the one plastic tub was cracked [see post from two days earlier about my crazy driving over sand dunes]. That was a relief. With money back on my credit card, we headed on foot over to the Pick 'n' Pay center (where we'd loaded up with provisions before our northward trip) in search of an Internet cafe. Was a bit of a wild-goose chase, since it doesn't seem there is one any more in that center. However, after we bought a koeksister [basically a donut soaked in sugar syrup] and a tray of melkterts [milk tarts] at a home-bakes store, we were re-directed to an Internet cafe on the next block that only cost R30 (about $4 at the time) an hour.

Jesse got bad news via email--our friend Sergio Palacios* died in a car crash about a week and a half ago. No details except that it happened in Mexico. Leo [my co-worker and cat sitter] wrote to say that the cats are fine and that my plants "are still green." He should have defended his thesis yesterday. It was nice to hear that all is well in San Diego. Saw a few of Genevieve's wedding photos [Genevieve is my sister--she'd sent me the link to the photographer's website to see the just-released photos of her wedding that took place at the beginning of August], but the connection was a bit slow to see more.

After that, we headed back to the Pick 'n' Pay center for a subdued [because of the news we'd just got about Sergio] lunch at a cafe (toasted cheese and tomato, with chips and a Grapetizer for me, and a vanilla milkshake for Jesse). Then, to Pick 'n' Pay for some snacks for the bus ride and to a pharmacy to buy postcards. We sat in the parking lot to write our postcards, then went to post them at a Postnet (R9 each! Ridiculous). [I don't know why I didn't write about this in my journal, but Das Rollende Hotel pulled up into the parking lot of Pick 'n' Pay while we were there and its passengers spread our all over the mall--there were very few postcards left!]

And guess who we saw in the parking lot of Pick 'n' Pay? Richard [the son of the proprietress, and who we'd waved goodbye to earlier that morning] from Kalahari Trails! He was looking to buy some mattresses. As he said, we seem to be followed by Richards (Richard the tourist Brit [see post from our first stay at Kalahari Trails] showed up at Kalahari Trails while we were there last night to look for stuff they'd lost and talked to Jesse about Namibia and the Garden Route... also, we'd seen him at the lion kill earlier in the day [Richard the tourist was a bit of an oddball, and Richard the son of the proprietress, was not to fond of him. Long story, and this paragraph is filled with "in" jokes that I can't really explain]).

After some aimless walking around [we had hours to kill before our bus left], we stopped at "Friends" coffee shop and had some Rooibos [red tea] and mini carrot cake. We sat there as long as our butts would take it and then did some more aimless wondering--looking at Mr. Price Home and Mr. Price (clothes) stores. Some nicely-patterned duvet covers at the home store, but they didn't look particularly well made. Too bad. Then we decided to see what Game [a store] sold and bought a bag of mints for Jesse and some red Bic click pens for me ;-) [those pens are one of my favorite things I brought back. I love them].

By that time, it was finally 5 pm and we felt we could show up at Elron motors/Mahindra/Kalahari 4x4 to wait for Neil to take us to the Intercape (bus) office, which he did at 6 pm [we'd left our bags at the dealership when we dropped off our truck. Neil was a very accommodating, nice guy]. Now, we're on the bus to Cape Town and Jesse is quite uncomfortable because he doesn't fit [Jesse is 6'4" and has problems with airline seats etc.]. :-( Let's hope we get a bit of sleep! [It was an overnight bus ride].

[*Sergio was a very interesting guy--oh, the stories there are about him! He was Mexican, but had lived in England for a while and thus had a British accent when he spoke English. The Mexican government gave Sergio a scholarship to go to graduate school in the USA... he got his PhD in Wisconsin (working in the same lab as Jesse) and then did a postdoc in the USA too. He was back in Mexico to comply with the terms of his scholarship--that he return there to work (I don't know the exact details, but sending Sergio to get further education in the USA was an investment by Mexico). He was a very good runner and entered local road races (I think 5 km was his specialty) to win the prize money and was quite upset when he didn't win his entrance fees back. He also quite liked to drink... one time, he was still drunk from a night of drinking when an early-morning race was going to start, but he ran it anyway. The photo below is from my first Halloween in graduate school (1997). Sergio is on the left--he went as a box. For the record, next to him is Jason Hickman (Chicago Bears fan), Tracey Grimek (biohazardous waste), Jeff Gralnick (monk) and that's me, the cleaning lady in front. We were all first-year graduate students here. I had a brand new kitchen towel I took as part of my outfit and was quite upset (I didn't let on) when someone I didn't know at the party asked to borrow it to clean up spilled beer... it never did come clean. The bright spot on the bottom left is because my camera was on self-timer on a glass table and the flash got reflected back.
]

10 September 2008

2008-12-07T16:44:00.000-08:00

10 September 2008

What a difference a day makes! This morning, I got up at ~6:15 am and had to fight my way to a sink because the bathroom was packed with German women from Das Rollende Hotel. We got on our way at 7:30 am, after getting a lecture from the East Londoners about how SA is "heading the way of Zimbabwe."

Within a couple of kilometers, we were passing a stopped car when we noticed why they were stopped--2 cheetahs lying in the grass!!!!!! Jesse slammed on the brakes while looking at the cheetahs so we ended up going over the edge of the road with one tire and made quite a dent in the gravel. For ~5 minutes, we watched them lie there, then as one got up and walked to the other, who had a radio collar on*.

Cheetahs in the grass.

The cheetahs start moving about.

Soon after that, they both got up and started walking away, getting quite close to another stopped car just ahead of us. And who should roll up, but Das Rollende Hotel. Actually, perhaps the cheetahs departure was a bit timed by their arrival. The cheetahs paused at a fallen over tree stump and both jumped up, the smaller (younger) one without a collar not being quite as successful at first and having to leap right off. Then the collared one got down and started rubbing her neck against the tree. After a while, they both walked off and up a dune, giving us a great silhouette view.

One cheetah is in the tree and the collared one is scratching her neck.

We continued on our way and after a few kilometers we came across some parked cars--a sure sign that there's a lion in the neighborhood! On our left was a massive male lion with a black mane, posing very nicely. He got up and walked over the hill as we watched, around the same time that Das Rollende Hotel showed up (we'd passed them a little way back). They caused quite the traffic jam as they tried to position truck and trailer around the parked cars. We actually had to move our truck to let them get ahead, then they penned in another vehicle that we had to reverse for, to let it out. Craziness. But, we then noticed two more females (maybe three) and a male on the right, who all started to pose nicely before conking out in the grass. We watched them for quite a while (D.R.H. didn't stay for long), then got moving.

A happy-looking cat.

A *BIG* cat.

A female lion showing how well her coat color matches that of the grass.

We came across a herd of giraffe in the distance and watched them for a while, but then someone pulled up and told us there was a lion kill just up the road. We watched the giraffes for a couple more minutes then headed for the lion kill. Sure enough, there were eight lions around a dead baby giraffe :-( with five males (all with stubby manes [a sign of youth or old age]) nibbling on the giraffe, and three females flat on their sides in the shade. The upper and right parts of the giraffe's head had been eaten away, so we could see its lower teeth/jaw. They'd really gouged out the giraffe's belly and exposed more and more of the rib cage as we watched. The two cars with the best view didn't move while we were there, so I didn't get great photos, and I was looking through the windshield, so Jesse had to take the photos out of his window for me. The lions and giraffe body were 2-3 meters from the road (the other pride we'd seen was ~5 meters from the road).

Lions at the breakfast table.

Well, to top of our "good" animal day, we saw a mommy and daddy ostrich taking a stroll with their eighteen chicks and I got some good photos of swallow-tailed bee-eaters. And we saw some cardinal-breasted shrikes. And we saw Namibia and Botswana on the same day (without actually entering either).

The ostriches and their 18 kids out for a stroll.

We're back at Kalahari Trails tonight, but are sleeping inside the house because Prof. Anne Rasa [the proprietress] thinks there'll be a frost tonight. I got to take a shower and that feels very nice! We've repacked all the camping gear in preparation for returning it tomorrow. Then, there will be the bus ride to Cape Town.

Oh--ran into Jared and Susan [who had been our neighbors at an earlier camp in the park] at Twee Rivieren... Susan said Das Rollende Hotel showed up at the picnic site they were at earlier in the day and that they'd totally taken over the place. Of course. We also saw a museum of the dwellings of early settlers today--must have been tough folks! It was a 14-day oxen ride to Upington...

[*I sent information on our cheetah sightings to some people who are studying them in Kgalagadi and they sent me the following:

"Thank you so much for the photos of the cheetah. They are of a female
Elena that we first found in September 2006 with her mother (they parted
ways shortly afterwards) and her one remaining cub of her first ever
litter. She had the 4 cubs in September 2007 and unfortunately they
slowly got whittled down to just this one son. We think that she was
struggling to feed them and they were struggling to keep up with her. It
sure is tough out there!! Her son is now beginning to play a bit of a
role in her hunting attempts and he will be with his mother until he is
about 18 months old, so 6 more months to go before he is on his own".]

9 September 2008

2008-11-30T17:12:00.000-08:00

Mata-Mata campground, Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park

Well, we're back to camping after the excitement of last night. But once again, we have nice neighbors--an Afrikaans guy and his wife Winnie, from East London. They've been at this campsite for ~a week and this is their last night. They let us share their campsite so we wouldn't have to be next to Das Rollende Hotel--a massive bus pulling a cubicle hotel--looks like there are ~21 cubbies (14 windows on each of 3 levels, anyway) where people [German tourists] sleep. Apparently the whole contraption got stuck on a park road a few days ago and when they were rescued, after spending the night out there in the bush, the Parks people found the Germans wondering all over the dunes, never mind the lions, hyenas (some of which were apparently quite close), leopards etc. Quite the sight, their rolling hotel!

Das Rollende Hotel at Mata-Mata.

Today we had a very long drive from Gharagab to Mata-Mata--7:30 am to ~3 pm. The morning was very interesting--we had some serious 4x4 driving to do, over sand dunes. We got so stuck on one that I had to dig out the tires with our shovel and push the truck just to get it reversed down the hill so we could attempt it again. We had to try ~4 times, if not 5, and I really had to push the truck at times, knowing that lions had been in the area overnight (Jared tracked them to a waterhole, past it, then into the grass). At one point, I was left at the top of the hill with our shovel, with Jesse and the truck at the bottom. [I tell you, there's nothing like the adrenaline rush associated with the fear that a lion or three might pop out of the lion-colored grass all around you at any moment to get you to push a truck that's stuck--it would have made an awesome photo, since I was up to my ankles in red sand and nearly horizontal as I pushed the front of the truck to get it unstuck. Thank you Kirsty for getting me into the "100 pushups" routine--those push-ups paid off!] I then commanded the truck over the remaining dunes, doing some very fancy steering at times to avoid hitting objects as the truck slid around.

The almost impossible hill. Those tire tracks coming up from the left and ending in deep sand are from one of our failed attempts.

We finally (~30 km) got onto the main road and back to Nossob, where we got petrol and switched drivers. That's when we realized that the battery for the fridge had jumped around so much that it was on its side and had cracked the plastic case it was in. And there was battery acid everywhere--I could smell it too. So I had to clean that up. Also, one of the plastic bins they'd given us the camping gear in is totally cracked. Oh dear. Let's hope the R90/day "full insurance" covers that.

Back to driving over the dunes--I just want to mention that I had a LOT of fun doing it, though I was quite nervous (of getting stuck or destroying the truck) too. I was quite impressed by my dune driving skills! [I don't remember the last time I have had so much fun, nor been so scared. I was driving like a someone in an off-road race... we had to go fast to get over the dunes, then the road would turn just as we crested, so I'd have to make a quick steering correction, then another as the road turned again etc. I didn't know I was capable of it, I have to say.]

Anyway, after hours of driving, we finally got to see the giraffe that hang out near Mata-Mata and nowhere else in the park--some pretty small ones frolicking, and some big ones eating the leaves off the tops of trees. It was strange to see such large animals with such long legs after days of smaller animals. Also, saw some Springbok sleeping at the side of the road looking very unperturbed by us driving up to them and taking photos. Saw lots of Swallow-tailed bee-eaters near Nossob--gorgeous birds. Oh! And both Jesse and I scared Kori bustards into flight while driving [this is an old joke between us--the Kori bustard is the largest flighted bird, but you don't normally see them flying because they spend most of their time walking around. One day when Jesse and I were chasing sunset back to camp in Etosha in 2001 (the camp gates close at sunset), we almost hit a Kori bustard that was in the road, but it took off at the last second--so we had proved to ourselves that they do actually fly]. We also saw a whole bunch of ostriches.

A trio of giraffes (sounds a bit like a Heifer catalog, doesn't it?). The all-neck giraffe on the left is a baby lying down.

Baby giraffe having a good gallop.

An unperturbed Springbok.

A swallow-tailed bee eater. No really, there's a bird in front of that tree. It's just to the left of center.

Writing by the light of the moon, as this entry has been, is getting tougher, so I'm quitting here [you should see my hand writing! Remember how our flashlight died a few nights before, the same night our lantern died? Well, we were preserving the last of our other lantern's faint glow for important things, so I had to use moonlight to write.]

Jesse at our Mata-Mata campsite. As far away as we could get from Das Rollende Hotel and a campsite that seemed to be full of the partying types. Of which type we are not.

8 September 2008

2008-11-30T16:27:00.000-08:00

Gharagab [a camp within Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park]

We're low on water and cash. Saw a couple of bat-eared foxes this morning, but nothing else of particular interest. The drive to Gharagab was partly on a 'jeep track'-like road...

...BIG break here... got distracted by various things, including a brown hyena at the watering hole (after 2 jackals and some Gemsbok and a very wary Ostrich earlier), sunset from the lookout tower, gin-and-tonics with our neighbors Susan and Jared and the 'tourism assistant,' Eric, a leopard (!!!!!!!) at the watering hole in the rapidly fading light, then again in the pitch dark, and also a Steenbok (I think) and a Gemsbok. And, dinner of fried potato cubes, naartjies, and mint crisp Cadburys [chocolate]. Yummy.

Okay, back to the drive--definitely needed a vehicle with good clearance on that road, and 4x4 would have helped at times (we drove with 4x2)... we almost didn't make it up the last ridge to camp, then we got stuck near Eric's cabin when we checked in. Eric had to drive our vehicle for us to our cabin, after we switched to 4x4 and were still stuck in the sand.

The 'jeep track' leading to Gharagab.

It was the hottest it had been get when we got here [found out later it had been 35°C (95°F)], so we had lunch (got here just after 12 pm, I think), then sat around until I got so tired I had to have a nap (!!) [this is remarkable because I don't nap]. I can see why there are siestas in hot countries! The nap lasted ~1/2 hour, then Jesse has a shower, then me. For the time when I was wet, I was actually cool (the 'windows' (screens) let in a nice breeze). But, I dried pretty quickly! Then, more sitting around, going through our bird lists and reading the park brochure we bought. I saw the pair of jackals while Jesse was in the shower, and he saw a pair of Lanner Falcolns while I was napping. The ostrich (a male in breeding colors, pink on his shins) took ~1.5 hours to actually get water--very wary.

Our chalet and 4x4 at Gharagab.

Around sunset, Jesse suggested we go up to the observation deck, so we did. Just before sunset (~6:30 pm), the neighbors got back from a game drive (didn't see anything, though we saw the brown hyena here--very cool) and Susan, the woman, came to join us. She met Jared ~10 years ago when they were both working on a rich person's yacht (he as a marine engineer, she as a stewardess) but had recently got back together (she lives in Sydney, Australia, he in Paulshof outside of Johannesburg) and are now engaged. Jared will emigrate to Sydney, and it sounds like kids are planned.

Brown hyena approaching the watering hole.

Susan invited us over for gin and tonics, including Eric when he showed up on his evening rounds. Jared is very into photography--he has a massive zoom lens with camouflage around the hood [I found out later it was a 600 mm lens!], and a professional Nikon body and an SB-800 [fancy Nikon flash... I'd recently bought myself a used one on eBay]. He passed us at a couple of waterholes yesterday and took out the big lens and mounted it on a door mount for stabilization. He took photos of the immature Bataleur Eagle we saw yesterday (when they pulled up in their 4x4, it flew away, so Jared tried to photograph it in flight) and of the pair of Lanner Falcolns we saw on the ground. They had come all the way here after we saw them at that waterhole, which was the last one before Grootkolk [it was a long way still, and not too long from sunset]. Susan was very chatty, and it was interesting to hear about life on yachts (some >100 meters!). RICH clients, by the sounds of it.

Eric joined us, so I learned that he spends two weeks here, then has one week off (during which time he lives in Twee Rivieren and enjoys playing soccer--he had a Kgalagadi Eagles shirt on) and his favorite animal is the cheetah. He went to Etosha ~1 year ago. I think from something Susan said that Eric has been doing this for ~2-3 years. Strange lifestyle!

The leopard was amazing--drank LOTS of water and took its time. Moved around the water hole, then drank some more. Left for a while then came back... apparently it lives with a female and cubs nearby and the female has brought the cubs to drink in the morning before... they only need to drink every 2-3 days. My first leopard, that I remember!

We have a helluva long drive tomorrow (~9 hours?), which I'm not looking forward to. Let's hope Mata-Mata is worth it!

7 September 2008

2008-11-23T12:28:00.000-08:00

Grootkalk [a camp in Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park]

Yesterday, we entered Kgalagadi and spent the night in Nossob (camping). We saw lots of eagles (Tawny (various shades) and Marshall (immature and adult)), but not much of interest in the way of mammals (Springbok and Wildebeest mostly, but a few hartebeest at a distance too). And then the troubles started in earnest--we'd been suspecting that there were problems with the fridge/freezer we were renting--it didn't get cold all the way (only down to ~18-20°C) and had a flashing error light. The battery it ran off never seemed to get charged...

(break--lots of commotion here because a Pale Chanting Goshawk [P.C.G.] that was in the tree over the watering hole swooped down to catch something, then flew back up into the tree (didn't see if it got anything), setting off alarm calls in a flock of sparrow weavers and/or red-headed finches that is hanging out in the tree next to me. I was too busy watching an adult sparrow weaver feed a younger one by our outdoor sink to notice the P.C.G.).

The Pale Chanting Goshawk above the waterhole at Grootkalk.

...When we got set up in camp (in Nossob), our neighbor came to see if it was okay that he plugged into our campsite's power outlet because his was in use by his neighbor and his fridge/freezer wasn't working off his battery! So we asked him for advice on ours and we tried his plug-in cord on ours, and it ran! He tried to clean our battery leads for us (didn't help) and ultimately let us use his cord the whole night, so our stuff finally got chilled for the first time in 1.5 days [wasn't that nice of the guy? So, his fridge wasn't plugged in at all, but he said it was okay because he was near the end of his 8-day trip through the park (still had to drive back to Pretoria) and so didn't have much fresh stuff anyway. We ran into other helpful people in the park too].

Our rooftop tent at our campsite in Nossob (the fridge is the beast in the wooden frame in the back, with battery in front of it).

Then, Jesse realized (within half an hour of the fridge problems and the realization that Kalahari 4x4 had given us a bum setup) that he had lost his pocket knife [that he'd had since he was ~12] somewhere along our trip, and soon after that, our lantern started going out (presumably because the rechargeable battery was low) and of course Kalahari 4x4 hadn't given us a cord for recharging that either... and then the flashlight we'd brought from the USA died... and it wasn't the batteries (we had spares) but probably the bulb (no spares of that). And we both had headaches. Not a good evening!

[A note to me delicate readers: Kalahari 4x4 did refund us the money we'd paid for renting the fridge/freezer when we got back, but we were stressed at this point in the trip that we were going to lose all our fresh food AND that we would end up paying for something we didn't get to use but yet took up a lot of space. And don't worry about Jesse's pocket knife... I found it in the console of our 4x4 a week later when I was making sure we'd got everything out of it before returning it... but imagine for the sake of the story that you don't know that either. And our kind cord-loaning neighbor loaned us a gas lantern for the rest of the evening and we managed to get by without needing our own reliable source of light at night for the remainder of our trip, because all but one of the places we stayed had light, and there was a second, very weak, lantern that we used sparingly. All's well that ends well?]

I cooked up some of our vegetables with stock and made up some rice to eat with it. For desert, we had fruit salad (to use up the pawpaw [papaya] and guavas that weren't being kept cold by the fridge). Oh, and we also ate a lovely avocado that Anne Kotze had given us (she lovingly ripened the avocado and pawpaw for us while we were in Hermanus). We slept in our rooftop tent last night and found it quite comfortable.

This morning, we set off for Grootkalk, after waiting for a petrol attendant (to sell us petrol since it was going to be two days before we saw a petrol pump again) to get back from looking at the camp water tank that was acting up. Since we were in lion country, we looked and looked for lions to no avail, but finally someone in a vehicle heading the other direction told us they'd just seen lions mating at the next (for us) water hole. It was 15 km away so we sped off towards it. But, we couldn't see a lion (or two) anywhere. We headed back to the road to try to find them from a different view (some Gemsbok were looking especially wary in the vicinity), also to no avail. On the way back to the waterhole for one last look, I thought I saw a leopard-like shape in a tree at a distance and resolved to get a better look at it as we left. Again, no lion at the waterhole, so we went to leave and I asked Jesse to stop so I could look at the leopard-like shape. It was just a pile of twigs. Then I casually looked our the other window and saw a lion! Just its head, then it lay back down again. They really are quite well hidden in the grass!

There's a lion under that there tree (about 1/3 rd in from the left).

(Another interruption--just watched the P.C.G. get a sparrow/finch and eat it... and now it's trying to get another one!)

Anyway, we finally got bored of waiting for the lion to lift its head again, so continued on our way. Saw loads of secretary birds before finally reaching Grootkalk, where the "tourism assistant," Eric, showed us to our lovely chalet, with an anti-leopard door and separate anti-snake door. Thankfully, it has a gas-powered fridge/freezer, so we can chill our food again! we also have our own bathroom, and there are (solar-powered) lights, so we don't need to worry about our lamps running out.

Our tent at Grootkolk, with anti-leopard door leading onto the porch (more just deters leopards/lions, since they could of course jump over the wall/gate).

The local leopard came to the watering hole here yesterday at 4 pm, and it's 4 pm now, but no sign of it yet. Apparently it visits a different watering hole some days. And the lions that are usually here have moved on to Gharagab, according to our neighbors. Let's hope we see some big cats soon, since Jesse and I are currently a bit disappointed in Kgalagadi (Etosha [where we went together in 2001] and Mata-Mata [where Jesse went in ~1998] are better).

5 September 2008

2008-11-23T08:36:00.000-08:00

Safari chalet at Kalahari Trails, just outside Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park

After breakfast at Libby's Lodge this morning, we went to Elron Motors and met up with Neil Nel to take possession of our 4x4. Niel was a bit of a chatterer, so it took a while, and my credit card was declined because it looked like "fraudulent activity"--had to call USBank and have them remove the block. Then, off to the airport to drop off our trusty VW Polo. After that, a ~R400 shopping trip at Pick 'n' Pay, followed by a cinnamon-sugar pancake (crepe) in aid of a laërskool [primary school] (R4 each). YUMMY! Wish we'd bought a few more! Then, off on our big adventure to the real Kalahari.

Imagine our horror wen we'd used up a half tank of petrol in about 1.5 hours! At 80 l (tank size) and ~R10/l, that adds up. We already miss having a small car! We filled up with petrol at Ashkam, a teeny town along a dust road. A police truck filled up with petrol ahead of us (one working pump) and spent R1060 on petrol! We saw ~20 people total in the town and the only one working was the petrol attendant (the two police were sitting in the shade drinking water).

Our receipt for petrol in Ashkam. Sweet, hey?

Then, we arrived at Kalahari Trails and were almost immediately led on a ~10 minute drive to our tent. A British couple (Karen (?) and Richard) followed behind us and have the tent next to ours. We all sat in the shade of our respective tent porches for the next two hours, seeing a few Springbok venture to the water source [we saw a herd of wildebeest there on our way in, and had also seen a jackal... Kalahari Trails is a privately owned piece of land with some animals (no big cats)]. We then invited the Brits to come join us for supper, since they were going to have pasta and the same brand of cheese sauce as us, and had no way of cooking without heading back to the "lodge" kitchen. I made us a big pot of pasta with the two cheese sauces, and added in a can of mushrooms and a can of baby corn (their contribution) and a fresh tomato and grated cheese (our contribution). They washed the dishes and then we sat around watching the stars and chatting. Now, am lying on a very droopy mattress [on a camp cot] and am about to go to sleep.

The view from our safari tent.

Some critter trail in the sand dune behind our chalet.

PS. Spoke to mom last night and Roger [my grandfather who lives in New Orleans] is safely back in his house post Hurrican Gustav and the only damage is the loss of his pecan crop for the year.

4 September 2008

2008-11-22T16:34:00.000-08:00

[Part of my continuing series on my day-to-day adventures during my trip to South Africa earlier this year. Full photos on my photo website]

Cosy Mountain B'n'B

Had a nice breakfast yesterday at Heidi van Niekerk's (at Kliprivier), sitting with 2 very English-sounding Joburghers. We then went to see the surprisingly very impressive Nieuwoudtville Waterfall then packed up the cottage and headed to the kokerboom forest a bit further down the road.

Our entrance ticket for the waterfall (all in Afrikaans... "Hantam Municipality. Waterfall admission ticket. Adults R4").

The reverse side of the waterfall ticket.

Jesse admiring a succulent plant near the Nieuwoudtville waterfall.

A kokerboom with the kokerboom "forest" in the back.

(The morning sun just rose over the mountain behind me and hit my back... my shadow is currently very long)... time for breakfast now.

[Later] ...Was a bit surprised to get charged R16 for "tea/coffee" in addition to the R900 we paid to stay and eat at Cosy Mountain... would have thought that would be included with dinner/breakfast. Oh well.

We met some nice people at both Cosy Mtn. (a couple from Joburg traveling with a couple from Hermanus) and at Kliprivier, over breakfast (a couple from Joburg). All retirement age... perhaps because we were there during the week? There was also a woman from London staying at Cosy Mountain... a bit strange. [She] was there to see Michell, the manager. Michell had previously been a home health care worker for her in London, when her husband had had a stroke and she'd had hip (and knee?) replacement. There was an assortment of dogs and cats there too--one of the dogs, Riley, is a cross Rhodesian Ridgeback and Border Collie. Odd combo! Michell's boyfriend (? "Ben-John") studies leopards in the nearby mountains and lives there too with his 20 y.o. big-haired assistant (who is doing her Master's year and finished matric [12th grade] at 15 y.o.... home schooled). They are doing research for the "Cape Leopard Trust" or something. Michell showed us photos from their camera "traps" yesterday--in addition to leopards, they've got photos of many other cool animals--aardvark, aardwolf, two kinds of foxes, etc. etc.

Me closing my eyes against the sun at Namaqua National Park (near Cosy Mountain), with a carpet of orange flowers in the background.

Flowers at Namaqua National Park, near Cosy Mountain.

Jesse at Cosy Mountain at sunset.

We left Cosy Mountain and went to Goegap, where we had a quick walk around to admire the flowers and birds. Then we began the long drive to Upington, with a 30-minute stop at Augrabies Waterfall, and enjoyed white bread, cheese and Simba tomato chip sandwiches as I drove. [YUMMMY!]

Me in the shade of a Kokerboom at Goegap.

Augrabies Falls.

Now having a nice last night of 'luxury' at Libby's Lodge in Upington before our ~week roughing it in the Kalahari.

Business card for owner of Kraaifontein cottage. Highly recommended, but know what you're getting yourself into (no electricity).

2 September 2008

2008-11-16T09:55:00.001-08:00

Kraaifontein Cottage

Here I am, writing by the light of an oil lamp--Kraaifontein Cottage does not have electricity, which isn't a problem for anything other than the cell phone, which needs to be charged.

Jesse and I went for a little birding walk at Enjolife this morning after breakfast. Saw some weavers over the river, a barbet in a thorn tree, a longspur in a bush near the farmhouse and both a fiscal flycatcher and a fiscal shrike. We then checked out and headed on our way.

Morning light from our Enjolife chalet.

We first went to Wupperthal and bought some overpriced soap made with rooibos [red tea... the area we were in is where most rooibos is grown. Also where Hoodia, a "diet supplement" currently popular in the US, is grown]. Then we visited the veldskoen [field shoe... simple leather shoes] factory but didn't buy anything. Jesse got a Stony Ginger Beer from the Mission Winkel [store... it was a *very* Afrikaans town] and I bought a loaf of fresh white bread from the bakery, the taste of which took my back on my Parkview days [Parkview is the suburb of Johannesburg I grew up in, and our local Spar store carried fresh, government-subsidized bread loaves. I would sometimes buy a fresh loaf and rip it open to eat the soft, warm innards]! Jesse liked it too, so we ate slice after slice of it as we drove back to the Biedouw Valley turnoff.

Me at the Rhenish Mission church in Wupperthal.

Sheep at a farm at the turnoff to the Biedouw Valley.

Just past the turnoff was a rooibos farm and packing shed, so we went in at the same time as a car full of Swiss and I tracked down the owner to see if we could buy some tea [I just thought to add that there was a bench-full of cute kittens and cats sitting in the sun outside the farmhouse door]. We got a kilogram (!) [~2 pounds] of loose tea for R35 (!!) [that was something like $4.50 at the time] and bought a few boxes of bagged tea as gifts for a bit more money. Then we stopped a zillion times for me to take photos of flowers and scenery ;-)

Jesse took this photo of me at one of our flower-photo-taking stops.

We slowly made our way to Nieuwoudtville, stopping at a single-lane river crossing next to a very remote farm for lunch. We passed (and were passed by) the same motorcyclists numerous times--we saw them on the way to Wupperthal, in Wupperthal (they were looking for the tea room), at our lunch site, and a few other places.

The one-lane bridge where we stopped to have our lunch.

Finally around 4:30 pm, we made it to Kliprivier Guesthouse, ~1 km from Kraaifontein, and where our hostess, Heidi, lives. I hadn't realized that the cottage doesn't have electricity, but it does have gas stove and hot water. We have a fire going again too, since it is quite chilly here.

The entrance road to Kraaifontein Cottage. The light was beautiful that evening.

The front entrance to the cottage.

The cottage looked a little rundown from the outside, but it has quite a bit of charm and is nicely stocked [and was really nice inside]. And, it has a good supply of blankets, unlike Enjolife! Speaking of Enjolife, Andrea and Moritz Conrad, the proprietors of Enjolife, came over from Germany 3 years ago and have a 2-year old, a 2-month old kid, and a dog, Rocko, who barks at rocks, chases after them, and drags them through the dirt! Cute dog.

Off to my chilly bed I go.

1 September 2008

2008-11-08T18:07:00.000-08:00

[This is a continuation of my journal entries from my recent trip to South Africa].

Large wave hitting a rock at the New Harbour the day after the big storm.

[I] was trying to read an article on mitochondrial DNA in National Geographic that Anne had recommended last night, so no diary entry. [I now think the sentence would have been better as: "Last night, I did not write a diary entry because I was reading an article in National Geographic that Anne had recommended. The article was about mitochondrial DNA and one interesting thing I learned from it was...(insert interesting thing here)." Just the other day, my advisor teased me about my attention to grammar etc. I do love editing, even if it is my own work].

Yesterday was another stormy day, with hail, rain, and wind. And the night before that was ridiculous! Thunder and lightning and a helluva wind. In the morning, we went to pick up our rental car--a VW Polo "Playa." Can't even fit both of our suitcases in the boot (trunk) [we had this problem in all the South African cars we were in... Americans just work on a larger scale, apparently. And we really had packed light.]! We also did a bit of shopping at Fruit & Veg and Spar for our west coast trip. Then, lunch with Anne and Ouma.

While Ouma was napping, we (Jesse and I) drove to Onrus to see whales, but instead we saw a very stormy high tide--sea foam on the roads and benches, part of a road closed off with water over it , and water up to the bathrooms at Davie's Pool [a beach I've swum at, and bathrooms I've changed in before]! Quite a sight. When we got back, we had tea with Ouma, which I skipped most of to visit [my great aunt] Elise in frail care. I only cried when I said goodbye [that is significant, because Elise and I have been known to just sit and cry with each other the whole time we're in a room together. Elise lived in the same neighborhood as my family did when I was very young, and I said my first two words to Elise... I said "hello Elise" when she came over to see me and my mom one day, or so I'm told. Elise is very sentimental, as am I, so bring out the tissues when we're together]. She talked about the Alaska trip she did with my mom that she loved and said she "only regrets that she won't see your [my] parents again." I told her that my dad would be there in two months! [In 2001, when I went to say goodbye to Elise at the end of my visit, she told me that it was the last time I was ever going to see her, meaning that she would die before I saw her again. I cried for days about that idea. Well, I saw her in 2004 (and cried the whole visit with her) and now 2008, and she is still doing well-ish.]

Then, Anne drove me, Jesse and Ouma's neighbors, Arthur and Emsie, to the New Harbour and to Onrus to see the stormy sea--crazy! In was no longer high tide, so the sea wasn't quite as crazy as it had been earlier, but there were some massive waves at the harbour and we got to see why the road was closed in Onrus--rocks and bricks strewn all over the road and into people's lawns and into their garages, with door bashed in! I took some photos of the mess [I hadn't taken my camera with me earlier in the day.]

Dented-in garage door and debris from the storm that was carried over the road and into this yard in Onrus.

Anne made us lovely cheesy omlettes for dinner. I spoke to mom--hurricane Gustav was still bearing down on New Orleans, but Roger, Betty and Gabriel the dog were all safe in Baton Rouge (?).

Today, we set off on our "big adventure" trip at ~10 am. Anne provided very well for us--2 large jars of fruit salad, full of guavas and kiwi fruit and bananas and pineapple with orange juice, 2 plastic containers and spoons to eat the fruit salad with [and boy did those plastic containers come in handy--we rented camping equipment later in the trip, but they only had plates, no bowls! We used those plastic containers over and over and over. One had been the cover for a hamburger someone had bought at the grocery store sandwich case... still had the label on], a large pawpaw (papaya) [that Anne had been lovingly trying to ripen for us the whole time we were in Hermanus], an avocado, a box of firewood, which we used tonight, an extra sweater for me, a cold bag [I meant insulated bag], and much more, I'm sure!

We left Anne and headed north--over the Franschoek Pass on Anne's suggestion (breath-taking!), down through Franschoek and Paarl, then up the N7 [highway] to Clanwilliam. At this point, we thought we might have ~30 minutes to an hour to go... we arrived at Enjolife [the farm we were booked to stay at] 2 hours later, having been almost entirely on muddy, potholed dirt roads, and having forded a few small streams [the rains we had experienced at the coast also affected the interior of the country].

Franschoek valley from the pass.

Unfortunately, the sun set right as we got to our chalet, and it got quite chilly again (we'd been positively warm for the first time in days not long before that!). So, I started a successful fire in the fireplace and put on a pot of water to boil for our supper of pasta and sun-dried tomato mix. Jesse and I had dinner around the fire, then admired the stars for a while before climbing into bed, where I am now. Oh, and Andrea, the Enjolife proprietor, told us we missed flower season by 2-3 weeks--it was a particularly short and early season. Oh dear!

Jesse at our Enjolife chalet.

Things about Clara

2008-10-26T16:05:00.000-07:00

I have this one last post to make about Clara, then I'll be back to the regularly-scheduled programming (i.e., recounting my recent trip to South Africa).

When I thought Clara had FIP, and thus perhaps only weeks to live (with medication), I started making a list of things I like about Clara. My memory is poor, and I was quite worried I would forget things about her. Then, two days later, I found out that she had only days to live (turned out to be less than a day) and realized I didn't even have time to post the list in the present tense. So here, in past tense, is the list I made during Clara's final days.

1. Clara liked warm butt spots. Warm butt spots are comfortable places left on the couch when someone gets up. I eat dinner on the couch and Clara would sit on my lap as I ate. When I got up to take the dishes to the kitchen, Clara would curl up in the spot where my butt had just been. Sometimes, she would even leave my lap to take Jesse's warm butt spot when he got up. When we returned to the couch, we'd have to pick her up to get our butt spot back.

2. Clara liked to get under the covers of my bed occasionally. She wouldn't stay very long--I think the limited air got to be a bit too much. Often, she'd want to get under the covers just when I was trying to go to sleep and would paw at the sheet around my neck. I often didn't want to make the effort to lift up the sheets to let her in, but I almost always did, thinking that I wanted to have as much happiness as possible in her short life (it was going to be short whether she lived 10 or 15 years).

3. Clara would sit on the (closed) toilet while I brushed my teeth. My nighttime routine with Clara is probably the thing I'll miss most about her, and I'm pleased to say she did the whole routine the last night she was alive. When I would stand in my bathroom brushing my teeth, Clara would come into the bathroom (pushing open the door to get in if necessary--and if I had shut the door too firmly, she'd just wait patiently outside for me) and sit on the toilet, with her tail hanging over the side. When I needed to use the toilet, I'd pick her up and put her on the side of the sink, and then she'd follow me to bed when I left the bathroom. She also loved to watch the toilet flush when she was younger--she'd run over and stand on her hind legs with her front paws on the rim of the toilet, and intently watch the water swirl away. I'm an internet addict and sometimes (always?), I stay up past my bedtime because I'm on my computer. Jesse sometimes would come and tell me that I should go to bed because Clara was waiting for me. I burst into a fresh round of tears on Clara's last night when she jumped onto the toilet, then I gave her a good rubdown on my bath mat.

4. Clara would sit on my chest when I turned the lights out at night and when I opened my eyes in the morning. I often read for at least a few minutes before I turn out my light and get settled in bed. Clara would sit at the foot of my bed until I turned the light out and lay down flat, then would walk up and lie down on my chest, facing me. I would pet her for a few minutes, until I wanted to go to sleep, and as soon as I stopped petting her (or when the petting slowed down because I was falling asleep), she would get up and walk to her sleeping spot--between my legs. I still haven't quite got used to being able to sleep with my legs together. In the morning, my alarm wakes me up by turning on NPR, but I don't always start stirring immediately. When I did, Clara would come sit on my chest again. She was a devoted cutie.

5. Clara had amazing speed and agility in chasing toys, especially laser pointers. She was amazing to watch. My friend Dean reminded me that he instituted a "rule" that when we played with the laser pointer with the cats, that we had to always end the game by making the dot disappear into the same spot--the red light on the carbon monoxide detector I had in the hallway. Dean thought that way the cats wouldn't be as confused about where the red dot had gone. About a year and a half ago, I got the cats a toy that consists of a bunch of feathers at the end of a string attached to a stick. When I made the feathers fly around the room, Clara would leap up really high to try to catch it, twisting her body as she went. I had to stop to let her catch her breath sometimes--she would be visibly huffing and puffing after a good session of playing with the feathers.

6. Clara was the bravest scaredy cat. She would often see "monsters" in every day objects, like a shirt on the floor. She would approach the object very slowly, then finally stick out her leg and poke the object to try and figure out what it was. We appreciated that even though she was scared of "silly" things, that she was brave enough to face them. She never did get used to the vacuum cleaner though--we'd put her into a room and close the door so that we could vacuum the rest of the house/apartment

7. Clara didn't like bare human skin. If I were wearing shorts, she'd do everything possible to avoid touching my legs while she was sleeping on my lap. Some nights when it's really hot, I'll sleep with my shirt pulled up to expose my belly. Clara would also deliberately avoid touching my belly then. Funny cat.

8. Clara would sniff anything you put in front of her face. If you brought something near her, she'd stretch her neck to smell it. She loved sniffing fingers in particular and you often had to let her sniff your fingers before you petted her on the head. On Clara's last Thursday night, she was lying in my lap and her breathing got slower and shallower. Jesse was sitting on the couch next to me and we both thought she might be very close to dying. Jesse reached out his hand to Clara, and Clara didn't move to sniff it and that just convinced Jesse and me even more that she was actively dying (and we both burst into even more tears). But, a few minutes later, Clara lept up and went over to her food bowl. In retrospect, we noticed that for over a day after coming back from the specialty vet, where she'd received a tranquilizer for her ultrasound, that Clara didn't close her eyes at all and we think that at times like that night on my lap, she was really "sleeping" as best she could and that's why she wasn't responsive.

9. Clara only used her claws on us once--when Jesse had to carry her through airline security, as I described in a previous post.

10. Clara was very good at not being caught when she'd escape from the house when she was younger. I let the cats go outside in the day for a couple of years when they were very young. After seeing Clara almost get hit by a car and having one too many critter (most still alive and unhurt) brought to me as presents, I decided to make them indoor cats. They clearly missed going outside at first* and they did escape on occasion (or even when they were allowed outdoors during the day but got out when I didn't want them outside, like in the evening). Alice would climb the nearest tree to about 6 feet off the ground, so I could just go pluck her off the tree and that would be that. Clara on the other hand was very sneaky--she would stand nearby and sniff everything in that spot. But as soon as I got within striking distance, she would run a bit further away, then stop and sniff everything in the new spot. And we'd repeat our little "game." I very rarely won and often had to just rely on her wanting to come back inside on her own accord. [*But I still recommend that people keep their cats indoors... Alice and Clara only missed going outside for a very short time and then turned into seemingly very contented indoor cats. They didn't have to get as many vaccinations by being indoor cats, which reduced their risk of getting injection-site tumors, and they weren't at as high a risk of getting run over, sick, or injured. Also, critters such as mice, chipmunks, baby squirrels, baby rabbits and baby robins weren't as terrorized as they had been once Alice and Clara stopped going outside.]

11. Clara would rest her head directly on my (clothed) leg when she slept on my lap. She didn't always do this--she used to rest her head on her leg or something, but lately had been just putting her head straight onto my leg. I don't know why I liked that so much--maybe because it seemed very trusting of her? She particularly did it a lot her last few days, including her last minutes at the vet, while I was sitting in the room waiting for the vet--I took her out of her carrier and she lay down on my lap with her head on my jeans. When Clara wasn't sleeping with her head on my leg, she'd stare at me from my lap. It was quite unnerving at times, actually, and I often asked her to stop staring at me (no, she didn't understand). At other times, she would look back over her shoulder at me--also very cute. No one could claim that she wasn't devoted to me.

12. Clara loved to chew paper and cardboard. No paper was safe in the house! Clara shredded bills, receipts, scientific articles, you name it. And she loved to sit in a box and chew the lip of it. She didn't eat the paper/cardboard... she'd leave all the debris all around. The night after we put Clara to sleep, Jesse was about to hide a piece of paper before going to bed, then realized he wouldn't have to do that anymore. We're still getting used to not having to put books/laptops on top of loose paper when we go to bed.

Clara chewing on the lip of a box while lying inside it. Alice is looking on.

13. Clara was Alice's "mom" in some ways. Alice is a pound bigger than Clara was, but Clara would often lick Alice and clean her ears for her. This is probably why Clara always had dirtier ears than Alice and also more hairballs. I'm going to have to start cleaning Alice's ears now (but not with my tongue!). Actually, the noise of Clara licking the inside of Alice's ears was quite unpleasant--very slurpy and loud. It was hard to fall asleep if Clara was licking Alice's ears.

14. Clara loved catnip. She would eat it and push Alice out of the way to get Alice's too. She would sometimes start chewing the carpet to get loose catnip flakes. When I put Clara into her carrier to take her to the vet one last time, I gave her a little pile of catnip to enjoy.

15. Clara had the softest belly and chest--I loved stroking them. When she was younger, she didn't really like being touched there, preferring to have her head played with. But, at some point she learned that if she rolled over, I would pet her because I couldn't resist her chest/belly. And forever after that, I was a sucker for her when she rolled over. She would start by putting her head on the ground, then flop her whole body over and stretch (even her toes--another thing I loved about her) into a crescent shape, opening up her chest/belly as much as she could. Unfortunately she would try to do this when I was working out in the apartment, too, so I often had to move her out of the way then so she wouldn't get hurt. On a related note, I regularly do exercises (on an exercise ball) that were prescribed by a physical therapist for the problems I have with my pelvis. One of the exercises involves me lying face down on the ball, lifting alternating opposite hand and leg pairs from the ground. Clara would sometimes meow when I got the ball out, jump down from her cat perch (where she would sit and watch me from in the mornings) and come running over, then flop down next to my hands on the ground. As I lifted a hand, she'd scoot over to that hand to get petted, then scoot to the other one when I lifted the other hand. That cat knew how to get attention, for sure! The other softest spots on her body were behind her ears and on the front of her neck (where she had a large orange spot I loved to touch).

16. Sometimes when Clara slept, she'd put all four paws together in a row (not always in the same order). I found that very cute. Alice does it too.

17. Clara used to love bean water. Bean water being that thick fluid that you pour off of canned beans. She used to come running whenever I got the can opener out, hoping that I'd drain the beans in the sink... then she'd lap up all the liquid. She didn't care for it if I poured it into a dish for her, and at some point, she stopped caring about it altogether, though she still did come give it a sniff every now and then. On the same note, Clara seemed to prefer almost any liquid to the water in her bowl... I used to frequently find her licking the remaining water out of the bathtub after I'd had a shower, but she did seem to outgrow that too at some point. She also, to the end, loved to stick her head down into my drinking glasses to get at my water. It was a funny sight, seeing her whole head through the side of the glass.

18. I loved the way that Alice and Clara would sometimes run with their sides touching each other down the hallway in front of me when I got up in the mornings, or when I put down canned food for them (an occasional treat--they had kibbles available the rest of the time). I felt like they were my matched pair of carriage horses or something. They did it on one of Clara's last days and it made me happy (and sad). When they ate side by side, I could use one hand to pet them both, and I'd run my hand up their tails, with each tail between a different set of fingers.

19. One of the cutest things about Clara was the way she used her ears--when she was paying attention to something, you could see them move as they pointed forwards and down. It was very cute. Another cute thing (there were many, as you can tell) was that the back of her back right leg was solid orange, and I loved watching her walk away from me with her orange leg, and her tail hanging down but curled up at the end so that it wouldn't touch the floor (she seemed to have a long tail for her size).

20. Clara would frequently bring me "presents." Her favorite thing to bring me was a pelt of (real) fur that an ex-roommate of mine, Jeff, had given me for the cats. Jeff's dad had bought the pelt for Jeff when he was a kid--I think he got it from somewhere called "Davy Crockett world" and one day in Madison, the cats found it and started licking it and carrying it around. Jeff kindly left it with me when he moved out. When I would sit on the couch at night, Clara would drag the pelt from my bedroom to the living room, making funny meowing sounds as she went. In the morning while I was still in bed (sometimes still sleeping), she would drag it from the living room back into the bedroom. Her other most favorite toy of all time was a catnip-filled "body pillow" that I got for her about a year and a half ago (at the same time as the feather toy). Clara had a love-hate relationship with it--she would lie on her side licking it and holding it with all four paws, then suddenly start biting it and kicking at it with her hind legs. We imagined she was saying "I love you I love you I love you... I hate you I hate you I hate you" to it. We actually had to take that toy away from her a couple of nights, because it got so intense we were worried she wouldn't sleep. When the catnip wore off a bit, she started dragging it around as a present for me.

21. Clara and Alice used to "wrestle"--they would take turns being the cat on their back on the ground or the cat standing next to the one on the ground, pouncing occasionally. Then, one cat would grab the other one around the neck with her front paws, and kick with both her back legs (the same thing Clara did with her catnip pillow).

22. One night, Jesse saw Clara do something that I never saw: Clara was lying on a cat bed, and Alice jumped up next to her and started doing "pushies" (as Jesse's mom calls them... when a cat "kneads" a bed before lying down) next to Clara. Apparently Clara got a bit fed up at some point and took her leg and laid it across Alice's front paws. Alice took the hint and stopped doing pushies and lay down. I wish I could have seen it.

23. When I would watch documentaries about birds, Clara would often go sit next to or on top of the TV, trying to get to the wing-flapping sound.

And that's the end of my long list. I'm sure it's not even complete, but I will stop here for now. Thank you for bearing with me as I recount my many stories about Clara.

Clara's carcinomatosis

2008-10-25T16:24:00.000-07:00

My sweet cat, Clara, was diagnosed with carcinomatosis in her chest on October 17, 2008 and I had her euthanized the next day. It was all very sudden and I didn't have much time to think about things. Though I knew that there was nothing I could do for Clara except make the decision to have her put to sleep so that she wouldn't suffer more than she had, I still wanted to find information on her condition--I wanted to understand what was happening to her and why (if there was a why). But I could find almost nothing about it on the Internet. This website, about a cat named Minu who also had carcinomatosis, was "comforting" to me--it helped to read other people's stories about their cats (several people whose cats had the same problem have left comments on the blog too). This website has the story of a cat named Harpsie with quite a few links (but I didn't find the links helpful for Clara's specific disease--they're mostly links for various other types of cancer in cats etc.). I want to share what little information I have on Clara's diagnosis in case it helps anyone else searching the internet for information on their own cat's condition.

The first symptom I noticed in Clara was that she was breathing more rapidly than usual. This evolved then into her breathing being very labored--it looked like she was hyperventilating. The first time I noticed her breathing faster than usual, she was sitting on my lap, but I assumed she had been running around or something. A week later, I noticed a flea on Clara's sister, Alice, and gave both cats a flea bath. While I was bathing Clara, with her hair matted down, I could clearly see her breathing wasn't usual. Again, I hoped it was because I was stressing her by giving her a bath. But the next day, a Sunday, I saw she still wasn't breathing normally and took her to the vet on the Monday. The vet suggested she may have asthma or a heart condition (common in older cats) and recommended chest X-rays. When he called me later that day with the results, he said that he couldn't even see Clara's heart because there was fluid in her chest (not in her lungs--around her lungs) and that was never a good thing. The "best" possibility was that she had a diaphragmatic hernia--a hole between her abdomen and chest that was letting abdominal fluid leak into her chest. But that condition is normally seen in animals who have suffered physical trauma, such as being hit by a car. Other possibilities included a heart problem, a tumor, or feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), a lethal virus infection. He had also drawn blood from Clara for some tests, and asked if I would consent to the blood also being tested for viruses. I said that would be fine. Because the best way to look at Clara's heart was by doing an ultrasound (echocardiogram), he referred me to a specialty clinic.

The clinic could only see Clara on Wednesday morning, and I needed to bring Clara's X-rays and blood test results in person, so I picked those up at my regular veterinarian first. No one ever discussed the blood test results with me, but I managed to figure out a lot of it and so could tell that Clara did have elevated white blood cell (especially neutrophil) counts (consistent with FIP) and was positive for the FIP test, though that doesn't actually mean much because the test detects exposure to other related viruses too, and cannot specifically indicate the presence of FIP (so why it's called a FIP test, I don't know... if it had been negative, I suppose it would have ruled out FIP, so I can see that it is still useful to get the test results).

The internal medicine specialist I met with at the specialty clinic agreed with my veterinarian that the best thing to do first was an ultrasound--it would have told us if Clara had a heart problem (which seemed to be what the internal medicine veterinarian suspected it was) and would also have shown evidence of a hernia (e.g. intestines/liver in the chest) or tumor. She also extracted the fluid from Clara's chest to have it tested for FIP and other things (protein content, cellular content etc.), and if she'd seen a tumor, she would have biopsied that too.

When the vet finally gave me her assessment that evening, she told me she had found that Clara's heart was perfectly fine, but that the fluid had tested positive for FIP by their "bench-top test*" and that the ratio of immune cell types she'd seen under the microscope was consistent with inflammation caused by a FIP infection. In other words, she was worried that Clara did indeed have FIP. If the pleural fluid she'd sent out for testing came back negative for FIP though, she said she might then need to do a CT scan on Clara's chest to look for evidence of cancer. She said she had seen some stuff waving around in the fluid in Clara's chest during the ultrasound and that it was possibly fibrin, another indicator of FIP-induced inflammation, but possibly cancerous masses. [*I don't know what her "bench-top test" was, but I know that pleural fluid from cats with FIP has a certain appearance (straw/yellow color) and that it foams when shaken because of the high protein content. Perhaps that is what the vet had seen?]

The test results were due back the next day, Thursday, but the lab was backed up so the results didn't come in until late Friday afternoon (it was agonizing). We assumed that Clara did have FIP--everything was consistent with it. FIP is incurable and somewhat contagious, so we were going to have to worry that Alice might get it too, if indeed Clara had it (there's ~5% chance that other cats in a household will get it, and a higher chance in siblings). If Clara had FIP, there was the option of giving her prednisone/prednisolone (corticosteroids--they reduce inflammation and would thus have potentially helped keep the fluid levels in Clara's chest down, at the expense of making her immunocompromised). With treatment, Clara's life could have been prolonged, though I'm not sure how long as I saw lots of conflicting information about FIP on the Internet. Possibly only weeks, but possibly months. When the vet called and told me that Clara didn't have FIP, I was amazed. But then she told me Clara had an incurable, untreatable cancer and thus only days to live before breathing would get too hard for her. The diagnosis had been made because a technician in the lab who examined the fluid from Clara's chest had seen the cancerous cells. I later found out that in about 75% of the cases, the cells are not seen and the cat has to undergo more tests for a vet to figure it out. So in some ways, we were "lucky" to find out so promptly, sparing Clara from more poking, prodding and visits to the vet.

Carcinomatosis is a cancer of the epithelial cells in either the abdominal or chest cavity. In Clara's case, it was her primary and only cancer. A cell in her chest had mutated and become cancerous, and now there were masses of growth throughout her chest. The physical presence of these cell masses was irritating to her body and so her body had initiated inflammation to deal with it. But it was the inflammation that caused Clara's chest to fill with fluid, pushing on her lungs and restricting her breathing. When I took Clara in the next day to the first vet to be euthanized, the vet told me that they do sometimes treat cats with carcinomatosis with corticosteroids too, and that makes sense, because it would reduce the inflammation, which is the same problem with FIP. I realized though that prolonging Clara's life would be for my sake and not for hers--she was still going to have cancer and likely still be uncomfortable and would have to get medication every day. So, we proceeded with the euthanization.

The other symptom Clara did have was weight loss... when I took her to the vet on that first day, I realized she had lost 0.3 lbs (had been 6.5 lbs for years, then was 6.2 lbs at the vet on the Monday). At the specialty clinic, she'd had over two ounces of fluid removed from her chest, so she was probably really only 6 lbs. I could feel that her backbone was sticking out more than it usually did and that she didn't have as much muscle on her back near her tail as she used to. That muscle wasting is apparently common in these diseases. I'd been feeding Clara lots of canned food her last week, to try to keep her energy levels up and to keep her eating. It worked--she was still eating and drinking on her last day--but it wasn't enough to keep her from getting thinner. And I knew that at some point, she probably wouldn't want to eat and drink, and she'd be extra skinny and would perhaps even lose the strength to jump onto my bed or onto the couch (her two favorite places). I'm glad that Clara didn't suffer more than she had to (I assume her last two weeks, when she was having breathing difficulties, were somewhat uncomfortable for her), though I felt like I had been hit by a freight train having her euthanized so suddenly. I never thought that I would lose her when she was only 10, and in very good general health.

Well, that's Clara's story. I hope this information is useful to someone else some day.

Clara stories

2008-10-23T21:14:00.000-07:00

Clara had many friends. After having her euthanized, I had a number of people I had to contact to tell them the news before I announced it to the world. One such friend is Dean, who is the person who connected me with Clara and Alice the humans (Clara was his aunt). He also lived in my house for a while when Clara and Alice were kittens, so he got to spend quite a bit of time with them.

Here are some things that Dean remembered about his time with the kittens:

"Didn't they used to sit and study birds at that feeder that hung outside the window at the foot of your bed? [they did]...

Clara and Alice hoping some birds will come to the feeder attached to the window. As a side note, the foil is on the soil of my plant there because I was trying to deter the cats from digging in it!

...And I remember making the cat sill on the new window so they could look out the window. [I had an extra window put into the house by some guys from a construction/roofing company... but I didn't find out until they showed up that that's all they were going to do... they weren't going to re-do the drywall around it etc. So Dean came and helped me with that and, because the cats liked looking out windows so much, we put a windowsill in for them. They seemed to appreciate it.]

The "new" window that Dean refers to, with windowsill. My mom bought the cats that big scratching post/adventure center and they loved it from the minute I started unpacking it.

Didn't you have some kind of running water toy thing there for them? [That was a water bowl actually... and the noise of the pump drove me crazy and then it broke, so I returned it. The cats didn't seem to care one way or another about it] ...And the cat door that what's-her-name's cat came in to enjoy some of their food. [My neighbor Anne's cat (Nicholas) used to sneak into the house through the cat door in the days when my kitties used to go outside. He was a BAD cat that Nicholas. That cat door caused other problems: one night I had to go fend off (with a flashlight) a raccoon trying to come through that door... the raccoon had busted through the screen door beyond the cat door but was having a bit of difficultly getting through the small cat door... the noise woke me up] Do you have a picture of them on top of the upper cabinets to the left of the stove? That was a favorite place especially in winter time." [I *wish* I had a photo, but alas there is not one.]

In the kitchen in Madison, there was an air vent above the cupboards. The cats would jump up to the kitchen sink, then from there to the top of the fridge, then from there to the top of the cupboards, and then walk all the way to the other end of the cupboards in order to sleep in front of the (hot) air vent. Alice in particular loved the heat--we'd often find her there hot to the touch, so we started referring to her as "roasted kitty" at those moments. One of my roommates from Madison, Jodi, also remembered a top-of-the-cupboard moment:

"Clara was always such a sweetie. I loved snuggling up with her to read or watch TV. One of my favorite memories of her is when she unwisely continued to sit on top of the kitchen cupboards while I was making onion puree in the blender (for kebabs) directly below her. Poor girl -- her eyes were watering like mad (huge crocodile tears), and she just couldn't figure out what was causing it. Such a funny and wonderful little kitty."

Poor Clara had many such onion incidents--she seemed to be particularly sensitive to onions and would often have to keep her watering eyes closed while we were cooking. We felt so bad for her.

Clara and Alice on Dean's bed. It was sometimes hard to know where one cat ended and the next cat began.

The vet I took Clara to for her breathing problems told me (when I went back to have him euthanize her) that she was a very sweet cat (and that he wasn't just saying that) and that the technician who drew blood from her told him that she could have done it all by herself (since Clara was so gentle). The technician at the specialty clinic was very excited that I was going to leave Clara there for an afternoon to have the ultrasound and fluid removal done--she said she couldn't wait to hold her and squeeze her (I was a bit worried about the squeezing part, given Clara's breathing problems, but I assume she didn't mean it literally). The internal medicine vet, after examining Clara, remarked how nice (and rare) it was to have a sweet patient--Clara didn't complain at being poked and prodded... there were no claws, no hisses, etc.

Speaking of claws... Clara did use her claws once. Jesse has the scars to prove it. When it came time to move Alice and Clara to San Diego, I decided (after 6-9 months of deliberations, I kid you not) that the best way to do it would be to have them in the passenger compartment of the plane. What I hadn't thought about was that cats can't go through the X-ray machines, and cat carriers can't go through the metal detector. That meant that Jesse and I had to each carry a cat through the metal detector while their carry bags went through the X-ray. I got Alice (she's bigger and not nearly as sweet as Clara... she has no problem using her claws on people) and Jesse got Clara. Since I was used to holding the cats while I cleaned their ears and cut their claws, I got Alice through and back into her bag without too much trouble. Clara, to say the least, was freaked out at this whole being-in-the-airport thing and in an effort to get away from Jesse, stuck out her back claws and tried to push off of Jesse's chest. She didn't escape (the security people told me it does happen), but Jesse was a little bit the worse for wear. A funny story from that day: Jesse and I didn't have seats together on the plane, and we each had one cat under the seat in front of us. The cats meowed during take-offs and landings (it took two flights to get to San Diego), but were quiet during cruising. During a take off, the guy next to me said "do you hear a CAT?!" He hadn't realized that Alice was in the bag at my feet.

I've realized now that Clara is gone that I have very few photos of her with people in them too. There are some of me holding her and Alice, but none of Jesse and none of Dean or Jodi with the cats either. It's too bad.

I assume that Dean took this photo of me and the kittens. I have spent many of my evenings over the last 10 years with at least one cat on my lap, if not two.

Thank you to Clara's friends for sharing their memories of her.

PS. I've put up more cat photos on my photo website.

Clara and Alice enter my life

2008-10-21T22:09:00.000-07:00

Where were we? Oh yes... I had just, out of the blue and without fully considering the commitment I was making, offered to take in two ~3 month old kittens. And without first asking my roommates/tenants if they were allergic (thankfully they weren't, and they actually quite enjoyed having cute kittens running around the house). So I bought all the things I'd need for the kittens (litter box, food, bowls, toys etc.) and drove down to the farm near Milton. When I got there, I met Alice and Clara the humans and went with Alice to feed the colony of cats in the barn. She fed them out of large communal bowls. I also met all the house cats and was introduced to the two cute grey kittens that were soon to be mine--they were sleeping together on a chair.

I haven't explained that I named the kittens Alice and Clara--their human namesakes did not name them after themselves, in case you were wondering. They'd actually named them something else, but I don't remember what (something along the lines of "Spots" and "Sparkles"). Before I went to meet and pick up the kittens, I had already decided that I'd name one Clara*. And after meeting Alice the human that night, and finding out just how sweet she was, I named the other kitten (the one who'd bitten her, of course) after her as I drove home. It was about an hour drive, and I spoke to the kittens as I drove to reassure them, saying their names to them over and over. I've spoken to them ever since, too. I think that is one of the reasons it seems so quiet around here without Clara.

When I got back to Madison from picking up the kittens in Milton, it was just about my bedtime, so I showed the kittens their litterbox and hopped into bed. They managed to jump onto the bed too, and thus began another tradition--sharing my bed with two cats. I was very nervous the first few nights--worried that I would roll over on them--but I don't move much when I sleep so it worked out just fine. The next day, I had some studying to do, and found that the kittens were very good at distracting me--Alice lay down on my notes, and they both ran around and played together, biting each other's necks. In fact, they used to spend so much time biting each other's necks that their necks were often wet and I nicknamed them "vampire kitties." They did outgrow that phase at some point, but they continued to play together until Clara got too sick (about a week before she died).

Over the next three months, I spent half of my pre-tax income (I was a graduate student, so it didn't amount to much) each month on vet bills--the cats had various infections when they arrived and needed tests for feline leukemia virus (because I was going to let them go outdoors), tests for worms, tests for eye problems, vaccinations, medicine for ear mites and of course, to be spayed when they got to 6 months. I was a little worried about what I had got myself into... so much so that I turned left against a red light while in shock on my way home from paying for them to be spayed (there was no one around to notice, thankfully). Clara had the most problems--she had polyps in the tubes that connected her nose to her ears and, as a result, was a very noisy breather for a while. Alice also had a habit of sitting on Clara, and one time I saw that Clara wasn't breathing with Alice covering her head and had to push Alice off. Clara started to breath again without paying much attention to what had happened. After trying various types of antibiotics in Clara's ears, the vet finally gave me some antibiotic pills to give Clara--they cleared up her breathing problems in no time, but had the lingering affect of making Clara not like it when I'd hold her on her back (as I did to give her pills, though I never had to give her another pill her whole life).

At some point early on, I added "surnames" for the cats. Or maybe middle names. Clara became Clara May, and Alice became Alice McGregor. More recently, Clara became Clara Mara. I can't even imagine how many nicknames I've had for them over the years! Alice's current nickname is "Alice Walice" or "Wals" (rhymes with pals) for short. Clara was normally "Sweet Potato" or "Sweet Petite." Petite because Clara at her heaviest was 6.5 lbs. Alice is about 7.5 lbs.

And that's it for today. I'm not sure what I will write about next. Maybe Clara's sickness.

-S

*I should mention that Clara the human pronounced her name "Clar(as in clarity)-uh," but I pronounced Clara the cat's name "Klaar-uh" (South Africans will have no problem saying that... that first syllable somewhat rhymes with "car" in Americanese even).

Clara playing in my window while I was trying to study. I've realized, after spending this past Sunday gathering all my photos of the cats so that I could get them scanned in, that

1. my photographic skill has improved over the years

2. I used to buy cheap film and have my photos processed cheaply, and that's too bad

3. I didn't used to be very good about focusing. But just seeing Clara's shape is enough to see how cute she was--she had an expressive tail.

Here's goopy-eyed Alice on my notes. I think I was TA-ing Bacteriology 612 (Prokaryotic Molecular Biology?) at the time, and those are the notes from that class.

Clara and Alice: the beginning

2008-10-21T08:30:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd start by recording what I know of Alice and Clara's beginnings, and of their years with me. I really don't have a great memory, so some of these memories may be a bit different from reality, having changed with each re-telling over the years.

Alice and Clara were likely born in or near a barn on a farm near Milton, Wisconsin in May or June of 1998. When they were about 1 month old, they were perhaps orphaned, because they approached the farmhouse together. Inside the house was Clara the human, the owner of the farm and who had terminal cancer, and Alice the human, Clara's long-time friend who was looking after Clara in her last months. The human friends had a couple of older house cats as well as some other cats/kittens they'd taken in--there were something like 40 cats that they fed from big bowls in the barn, too. Alice the human decided to give the two kittens who'd approached the house a bit of food, but Alice the cat bit Alice the human when she tried to feed her off her finger... thus resulting in Alice and Clara the cats becoming house cats while they were monitored for signs of rabies. Alice the human put them in a cage of some sort with food, water and cat litter in an empty Spam (or was it just ham?) can--the cats started using the litter box immediately and warmed their way into the humans' hearts. Because Clara the human was dying of cancer, they decided (a couple months later) to try to find permanent homes for all the cats in the house. I knew Clara's nephew, Dean, and somewhat by accident, ended up saying I would take the two kittens into my home--I'd really been enquiring about the kittens because my friend, Tinsley, had said she was thinking of getting cats, but then she decided not too, and I felt bad that it had fallen through, so I said I'd take them. And I'm very happy that I did.

This photo is likely by Alice the human and the miniature house in the center of the photo is from Indonesia, where Alice and Clara the humans spent something like 40 years of their lives as missionaries (with regular trips back to the States for fund raising). This is the only photo I have of Alice (in back) and Clara (jumping down) from before I took them in.

Clara Mara

2008-10-20T21:46:00.001-07:00

I cannot at this time continue writing about my South African trip. My beloved cat Clara was diagnosed with cancer (carcinomatosis) late on Friday afternoon after a week of vet visits and tests, and I had her euthanized on Saturday afternoon. As I loaded her up into her carrier to take her to the vet on Saturday, I couldn't believe what I was about to do with my "little girl." And yet I knew I had to, so that she wouldn't suffer any more.

When I found out on Wednesday evening that she was likely terminally ill (we didn't think it was cancer at that point, as I will elaborate on at some point), I started making a list of all the things I love about Clara, with input from Jesse and my mom. I had hoped to post the list before she died--I thought at that point that she had a few weeks to live--but her end came even sooner than I thought possible and now I am going to have to post the list in the past tense.

I also want to write about what little I know of her condition--it was very frustrating to find almost nothing about it on the Internet, and the most "useful" information Jesse found for us was actually on someone's blog (their cat had the same cancer). So I want to add my observations to the blog world in case it helps someone else.

I will eventually get back to writing about our trip, which seems like it was an awfully long time ago now.

30 August 2008

2008-10-12T16:37:00.000-07:00

30 August 2008

Well, apparently the Cape is having one of the worst storms in 7 years. Guess when Jesse and I were last here together? [Yes, winter 7 years ago.]

This morning, we picked up Ouma at 10 am in her car and drove her to Voëlklip [a part of Hermanus where she used to live] and back. We stopped at various places--just past the old harbor, Voëlklip beach, Kammebaai, Kwaaiwater and 1 or 2 others. At the first stop, we saw a whale or two spy hopping and tail flapping--pretty good view of it! But, no whales after that--one guy trying to surf though!

Voëlklip beach. That's the lifeguard house on the left.

You can see how windy it was here--look at that spray!

Then, lunch at the cottage and, while Ouma napped in her old room, I took photos of birds in the rain. Quite a few visitors--guinea fowl, francolins, weavers, shrike...

Guineafowl in the neighborhood

A weaver bird in the rain

Diana then gave Ouma a lesson on computers and we then took Ouma back to frail care [we were staying at my grandmother's cottage and she now lives in an onsite assisted living building].

For dinner, the Kotzes [Anne and Diana] and us went over to Joe and Neil's house for dinner, though Joe and Neil weren't there [it's a long story how I'm related to Joe, but I am]. Leanne, her boyfriend and Laura were, and Sally (50) came over with her boyfriend (29) [Laura and Leanne are Joe's kids, and Sally is my dad's cousin.] Mom and dad called me on my [rental] cell phone while were there there--there's a hurricane [Gustav] heading to New Orleans again and Roger and Betty [my grandfather and his wife] are evacuating. And Roger no longer has hurricane insurance.

[Roger and Betty survived Hurricane Katrina... their house had ~4 feet of water in it at one point, but they ripped everything out and rebuilt with money from their insurance company. However, then their insurance rates went up so much that Roger decided to cancel his policy. Thankfully, hurricane Gustav didn't prove to be as much of a menace as was being predicted at one point, so apart from losing their entire crop of pecans, Roger and Betty did just fine]

29 August 2008

2008-10-12T16:11:00.000-07:00

29 August 2008
UCT and Hermanus

Jesse at the University of Cape Town

Though it was pouring with rain earlier this morning, we drove out to UCT [University of Cape Town] to meet up with Dave Horwitz [a high school friend of mine]. He and Jesse had a latte, after we met David at Jameson Hall (a focal point of campus) and Dave showed us his office, where we met his new-ish officemate, Lovemore. Dave then walked us through campus and we saw a discarded, beat up umbrella in a garbage bin--just as Dave was telling us how the new students ruin many umbrellas each year walking through a 'wind tunnel' of a walkway in a Cape storm.

Me and David in front of Jameson Hall. Jesse took the photo

J and I then ventured over to the V&A waterfront for fish and chips (only the latter for me; Jesse had snoek [a type of strongly-flavored fish] and really liked it, though it was very bony). Oh, I also got a buttered roll for R3.50 [something like $0.45--quite the deal!].

Jesse in front of the fish-and-chips place at the V&A

Then, Diana [my cousin] drove us through to Hermanus, where we visited with Ouma [my grandmother] and had a lovely "vegetable gratin bake" made by Anne [my aunt, and mother of Diana] and a salad made by Diana. There was ginger cake with custard for dessert and Anne told me the *first* part of making ginger preserves:

Peel and chop ginger

Cover in boiling water

Let cool

Repeat (from boiling water step) 3x/day for 3 weeks...

Needless to say, neither I nor Anne will not be making that any time soon. Then, we all tried our hand at a Sudoku puzzle, but weren't very successful (Anne finally got it after getting a few hours' head start on it).

Jesse and I are quite cold almost always, which is really too bad. It sounds like we were a bit unlucky with the weather, as it had been summer-like earlier in the week.

Is there anything more pathetic than a wet cat?

2008-10-11T15:05:00.000-07:00

I break from the regularly-scheduled programming to bring you: wet cats!

I was just about to head to Costco this morning (as I do most Saturdays) and was petting the cats 'goodbye,' when I noticed a flea on Alice's stomach! It took me a good minute of squeezing, squishing, squashing and finally popping to get that flea to die--they're tough buggers. The cats have only had fleas once before--I returned from being away for three weeks in 2006 to find little black dots all over my bed, where the cats sleep. It took me a week or so to realize the cats were infested with fleas and those black dots were flea poop! At that time, they got their first ever bath.

Well, I didn't want another full-blown infestation, so I decided Costco could wait and immediately set about giving the cats their second ever bath (they're both about 10.25 years old, so this is an uncommon event for them) with an anti-flea-egg shampoo.

The cats weren't about to walk around nicely while I had my camera out for you to see their wet patheticness, but I did corner them and take a few shots of them sitting down. The photos don't really capture how silly the cats looked, so you'll just have to trust me or look at someone else's wet cat on the internet.

Clara after her bath, looking a bit unhappy.

Alice trying to warm up a bit in the sun (of course the flea made its appearance AFTER the heatwave we had this past week... both cats were shivering quite a bit after their baths today).

28 August 2008

2008-10-11T14:42:00.000-07:00

28 August 2008, in Pinelands, Cape Town

Mike and Moira [my uncle and aunt] picked us up last night at the Cape Town airport, which is undergoing lots of renovations in preparation for the World Cup in 2010. The same is true for the Joburg airport. [Because of the construction, the Joburg airport was very unpleasant--the passport control room was stripped down to bare concrete pillars and floors etc., and then we had to wheel our bags from the international terminal to the domestic terminal, which involved going outside and walking on a busy, narrow, bumpy, sloping sidewalk around a construction zone, all while in a near-tunnel with smelly cars. I had to help some poor American with her cart, since she almost lost control of it on one of the slopes.]

This morning, we awoke to rain squalls and overcast skies. It continued that way for much of the day. In the late afternoon, Moira drove us out to Table View, on the way to Bloubergstrand [those are suburbs with a view across a bay of Table Mountain and downtown Cape Town, but only on clear days]. We saw kiteboarders having a lot of fun jumping waves etc.--it was quite windy.

Me in Table View, where we stopped to watch the kiteboarders.

The kiteboarders.

During our pre-dinner drinks [a tradition of my grandparents that Mike and Moira have continued], Mike discovered that Jesse likes Scotch and brought out a box of 3 sample scotches with the disclaimer that he (Mike) didn't like them. Turns out, a couple of them are among Jesse's favorites! Nice surprise for Jesse, particularly with Mike being quite keen for Jesse to drink as much as he wanted.

Tomorrow we should be visiting Dave at UCT [a high school friend, at University of Cape Town] before heading to Hermanus in the late afternoon.

27 August 2008

2008-10-11T14:32:00.000-07:00

[A short and fairly boring entry... hopefully they'll improve!]

27 August 2008, almost in Joburg [Johannesburg]

The first three hours of this flight were the longest--we ate dinner and watched a movie, which seemed like they should take up more than 20% of the flight! Alas, there were another >12 hours to go. I managed a bit of sleep--the secret was putting my seat back, but not that of the empty seat next to me (Jesse had moved to an open exit aisle), then leaning my head against two cushions against the other seat back. A delicious breakfast we just had... at 2 pm South African time! Landing in Joburg soon, then customs and a connection to Cape Town following that. PS. Movie was "Definitely Maybe."

[I wore my running watch to and in South Africa (I don't normally wear a watch). I'd heard that to reduce jetlag, one should switch their watch to the time zone of their destination, to get you to get used to the new time. I did that this trip, as soon as I boarded the airplane, and I really think it helped me!]

26 August 2008

2008-10-08T21:46:00.000-07:00

That's Jesse and me, waiting in the San Diego airport for our flight to Washington, DC.

I kept a diary of sorts while I was recently on holiday in South Africa. I don't normally keep a diary (I did as a teenager, but not as an adult) but I know the limitations of my memory and I was certain that I would want to remember some of the events and my thoughts from the trip for longer than my memory would otherwise allow me to! I am going to try to reproduce my diary entries here... this blog entry is just an experiment because I might decide that it isn't interesting enough to share with the world. I'll put editors notes in [brackets] like that.

So, let's begin with the title page:

The Great Adventurers: Samantha & Jesse go to South Africa
26 August-20 September 2008
by Samantha O* [sorry... trying not to be found by some people]

26 August 2008 [I was trying to get into a South African frame of mind--that's why I put the day first, then the month ;-)]

Last night, I got into bed at ~11 pm, but didn't fall asleep until ~2:30 am. Too bad I had to wake up just after 4 am to get ready for our 5:30 am shuttle pickup! I thought of many things as I lay there--had I packed everything I needed? Should I add another set of "nicer" clothes and shoes? After not thinking of anything I should have packed but hadn't, except a warmer pajama top [which I got out of bed to pack, and good thing I did--I wore it every night in South Africa], my mind switched to other things.

I thought a lot about Lindsay Templeton, the 3 1/2 year old daughter of my friends, Matt and Ginger, who was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia just over a week ago. Every time I thought of how little sleep I was going to get [that's what I do when I can't sleep], I thought of something that Matt wrote [on the CaringBridge website they set up to keep family and friends updated on Lindsay's treatments]: on the nights he spends with Lindsay in her hospital room, he is peaceful but can't sleep, and on the nights he spends at the Ronald McDonald house, he is anxious but can sleep. Lindsay is undergoing aggressive chemotherapy and may be in the hospital for more than 6 months. I was very peaceful as I lay there, but my mind and body just weren't in sleep mode.

I also thought about a book I read over the weekend, Twilight [a young adult novel about a high school girl and a vampire who fall in love], and how it's being made into a movie. I found it interesting that I got no idea from reading the book of what the female main character (and narrator) "looks" like, so I was wondering what she'd look like in the movie. I didn't think it was a particularly good book, but it did keep me interested and I've been thinking about it a lot since.

Sleep eventually came, then I was up at 4:10 am. Since then, everything has gone well and we're currently flying to Washington Dulles airport, where we'll connect to our SAA flight to Johannesburg.

Presents for Africa

2008-08-24T12:12:00.000-07:00

We leave on Tuesday morning for South Africa. I'd ordered lots of presents on amazon.com that were going to be shipped last Tuesday, but that then got delayed and they were only scheduled to be sent tomorrow! No good. So I cancelled the order and, being unable to find the gifts in town (I looked quite hard), I went out on a massive shopping spree yesterday. Thankfully, I was quite successful! I have one more present to buy, but I packed up the presents I had for everyone else yesterday and it was a lot of fun! Knowing that I would be devastated if the presents were in a piece of lost luggage, I'm seriously thinking about putting a lot of them in my hand luggage. Packing will start later today.

Anyway, I wanted to show off the fruits of my labors yesterday (see photo below). A note on "presents for Africa" to the non-South Africans who read this: saying "X for Africa" is a phrase meaning a lot of X (kind of like saying "enough food to feed an army"). Not included in the photo are photo albums I made (one for my grandmother, with Genevieve's wedding photos, and the other as a "brag book" (mostly of G's wedding) with copies of photos for those who want them) and some T-shirts (new) that G gave me to distribute to less wealthy people I come across in my travels. And before you think I'm strange for giving kitchen sponges to people, it seems that S. Africans quite like those sponges with a scrubber on one side. And note, too, that a lot of the "bigger" presents are at the back of the bags, hidden from view. They include Microplane graters for my aunts/uncles!

Well, that's all until I return, and I will post an itinerary and a link to my photos then.

Opening ceremony of the Olympics

2008-08-12T08:24:00.000-07:00

I only got to see part of the Parade of Nations of the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics on TV the other night and I didn't find that very interesting. But, I saw still photos of other parts of the ceremony and realized that I must have missed something amazing. Thankfully, I found a video of the "pageantry" part on the NBC Olympics website. Under "NBC Encore" on the left menu, you can find the Opening Ceremony in three parts. I *highly* recommend watching part I--truly spectacular. I had no idea that humans could work that well together.

For Genevieve: on the same page, they also have a video of dressage for the 3-day event.

Enjoy!

Splint update

2008-08-10T10:09:00.001-07:00

That monstrous splint I'm wearing on my leg when I sleep seems to be working--my foot is hurting less. Yay! The first two nights I wore it, I woke up probably 6 times though, needing to readjust my leg position. It still wakes me up sometimes, but it's much better. I took the splint to Seattle for Genevieve's wedding (see photos I took of the wedding weekend here, but don't look too soon 'cos I still have to edit (winnow and caption) the gallery), but I think it is too monstrous to take to South Africa (leaving 26 August!!) so will likely just take my old (smaller) splint.

Jesse has stopped wearing his medical shoe, but his foot still hurts. He also had big problems when he started wearing a different shoe (a hiking boot, so it is still stiff underneath) after 2 weeks in the medical shoe, because all his foot muscles and nerves had to wake up again... and they felt a bit weird for a while.

Anyway, thanks for your concern and pity for our patheticness.

Another tag--A to Z facts about me

2008-08-10T09:20:00.000-07:00

Kirsty tagged me.

A. Attached or Single? Attached

B. Best Friend? Jesse (awwww!)

C. Cake or Pie? Cake, if I have to choose between those, but my favorite desserts starting with C are cobbler and creme brulee

D. Day of the week? Friday--now that I don't work on the weekend anymore (as I did in graduate school), I find my brain takes a few days (starting cold on Mondays) to get into it's most productive mode at work. By Friday, I often think I'm a genius. Mondays, I feel like my brain is pumping molasses. Also, I do somewhat look forward to the weekend, so that makes Fridays fun.

E. Essential Items? Crocs

F. Favorite Color? Blue for looking at, brown for wearing

G. Gummy Bears or Worms? Worms. But really neither, since I try to avoid eating gelatine. Favorite gummy candies are Swedish Fish and Sour Patch Kids and Jelly Tots (South African--thanks for reminding me of those Kirsty!)

H. Hometown? Johannesburg, South Africa

I. Indulgences? Sitting on the couch, surfing the Internet, good desserts

J. January or July? January--my birthday month. And July can be too hot (January can also be too cold, as I can attest from my years of living in Wisconsin)

K. Kids? Someday

L. Life isn't complete without? A good workout. And family.

M. Marriage Date? Never! Okay, maybe someday, in a judge's chambers or something. But probably just to take care of a health care issue.

N. Number of Brothers and Sisters? 1 sister

O. Oranges or Apples? Apples, though not as much as when I was a teenager (forget 1 a day... I was doing 3 a day or so), and oranges are gaining

P. Phobias or Fears? Human-made objects under water (including Kreepy-Kraulys--just looking for a photo of one freaked me out--and pipes) and natural objects under water that shouldn't be there--like whole trees, as I saw in the clear, clear water of Quetico when I went canoeing there a couple of years ago. FREAKY! I hyperventilate for the first 5 minutes of snorkeling. Then I start loving it (if there are pretty fish and none of the above objects).

Q. Quote: "Efficiency is intelligent laziness"--David Dunham; but just last night I saw this on a new facebook friend's page: "the best way to get something done is to begin" and I quite like that one too

R. Reasons to Smile: I have a good family

S. Superman or Wonder Woman: don't know enough to decide. I think I liked Wonder Woman when I was a kid though, so I'll go with her. Actually, when I was 6 and living in Athens, Georgia, I successfully blew all the seeds off a dandelion and wished I were Wonder Woman, but it didn't come true, so the next dandelion I tried, I wished it again but couldn't blow all the seeds off. When I told me mom about my wish not coming true, she told me that it was because I had tried again and failed. Or at least that's how I remember the story

T. Tag 5 people: you, you, you, you and you. I still don't think I even have 5 readers, and one of my readers is the person who tagged me :-)

U. Unknown Fact about Me? I have a mole shaped like a fried egg (with a "yolk" higher than the "whites") on my stomach

V. Vegetables? Oh yeah! Love them. I'm a subscriber of the Be Wise Ranch Community-Supporter Agriculture (CSA) program. Favorites are tomatoes (okay, that's a fruit, but whatever), chard, green (or purple or yellow) beans and potatoes (fried in oil, of course).

W. Worst Habit? Checking email frequently

X. X-ray or ultrasound? Never had an ultrasound. One time I had an X-ray, I got to lie on a mighty comfy camp mattress--and so I learned about Thermarest camping mattresses and went out and bought myself one for backpacking

Y. Your favorite food? No one favorite, but plenty of favorites: Twix, Creme brulee, Sunkist fruit gems, caprese salads (tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil), good baby potatoes (with oil-crisped skin), good cheese, South African-style fudge, cobbler crumb topping, good lentil soup, tempura vegetables, avocado sushi, pecans, dried fruit, Terra chips... I could go on and on

Z.Zodiac sign: Aquarius

Fun with splints

2008-07-19T16:48:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned before, I have plantar fasciitis (PF) in my right foot. I had a mild case in my left foot for a little while too, but the right foot is the main issue... the pain has been going on for two years now. Last fall, I went to a physical therapist (PT) about it, and she gave me some ideas, but it didn't help too much... the main thing was that I was supposed to stretch my calf muscles every 2 hours (or less!), and I found that my foot actually hurt more the more I stretched. After taking a long time off of running, I decided that sitting around getting fat while my foot remained unchanged wasn't cutting it, so I took up running again. I did it without first consulting my PT, but after the first couple of runs, I mentioned it to her and she told me that she knows another PT who had PF themself and who, after 6 months of resting with no improvement in their PF, started running and actually found that it helps. See, PF can lead to build up of scar tissue (or so I'm told) and running can cause it to break down (a good thing). So, I started running without guilt once a week... but after running, my foot would seize up and I'd limp for a little while. Also, the day after running, my foot would hurt more than it normally does. But, I was running!! Yay for running! After a while, I picked up the running to two days a week, then three. I've now been running at least three days a week for at least a month. I've lost a few pounds! Yay! My foot doesn't seize up after running! Yay! I've even started wearing shoes other than Crocs when I'm not in my running shoes (which I can only wear when running... my feet kill me if I walk in running shoes). BUT, my foot has been getting bad again. It could be the increased running--not only am I running 3-4 times a week, but I recently started interval training more seriously, thanks to Kirsty--or it could be the use of non-Crocs (aka Dansko Clogs, recommended by other PF sufferers). Or, it could have something to do with my night splint not working as well as it used to. This is what my night splint looks like:

To make this a better story, I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent here. Just over a month ago, I was entering some data in the form of numbers into my computer at work. I have a laptop that doesn't have a number pad on the right like many keyboards, so I had to use the row of numbers across the top. While stretching my fingers from one number to another, I started getting a tingly feeling in my left wrist that was quite uncomfortable. It got worse and worse. It was uncomfortable even while I was typing letters! Which is particularly bad since I'm at a stage in my research when I need to type a lot. It was right before I was going to go to a conference in Colorado, so I hoped that a bit of time off from extensive typing might cure me. It didn't. Turns out Jesse had a wrist splint around from when he was having wrist problems, so now I wear it whenever I type (including now). As uncomfortable as it is, it does help. I can type, and when I'm "bad" and type a couple of sentences without taking the time to put the splint on, my wrist stays fairly comfortable. Here's what it looks like:

Around the same time I started having wrist problems, Jesse started having problems with his right foot! Jesse is also a runner, and even ran a marathon earlier this year. His problems were more with the front of his foot, but that's how my PF started too. Instead of waiting 1.5 years to see a doctor as I did, Jesse waited only a few weeks. The doctor took X-rays and sent him to a podiatrist. In between, Jesse decided to finally try Crocs (since walking barefoot around the apartment hurt his foot). This past week, the Crocs arrived the same day Jesse got the verdict: he has sesamoiditis--one of his sesamoid bones has swelled to twice the size of the other one! Ouch! The only way to help it apparently is to not bend your foot, so Jesse was prescribed a rigid medical shoe. Oh well--he can still wear a Croc on his other foot. So, here's what he looks like now (he has to wear this shoe whenever he's not sleeping, driving or showering... when he's driving, he wears a rigid hiking boot):

Back to my night splint. I guess I need to back up a bit... I finally picked up the frequency of my running earlier this year when I bought a night splint for my foot (the idea of the splint is to keep my foot flexed (~90 degrees), providing a passive stretch through my plantar fascia (and achilles and calf) the whole night). My doctor had recommended I wear one, but the pharmacist at my HMO looked at me strangely when I said I needed to get one and said they don't have anything like that. That discouraged me and since my PT didn't say anything about night splints I didn't try to find one for 9 months or so. But one of my resolutions earlier this year was to try harder to get over the PF, so I did a lot of online browsing and finally found the splint above, which I've been wearing every night for months now. I should say, some nights I wake up in such discomfort, I rip off the splint and chuck it on the floor. But most nights I tolerate it the whole time I'm in bed. However, the straps have stretched a lot, and I have to adjust the splint a lot to get it not to slip down my leg too much... if it's too loose, my foot doesn't stay flexed; too tights and I wake up in agony and rip it off. Lately though, no matter what I do, I wake up with my foot at a 45-degree angle. No good. So, a couple of days ago, I ordered a bigger splint (bigger is better?) that looked like it would do a solid job of keeping my foot flexed. It arrived this morning, much sooner than I expected. I haven't tried sleeping in it, but already I find it mightily uncomfortable. We'll see how tonight goes! Here's a photo of it.

So, dear reader, stay tuned to read more of my ongoing competition with Jesse to be the most pathetic! Will Jesse try to outdo me by upgrading to a surgical boot (if the shoe doesn't work in a few weeks, he'll likely have to do that... and after that comes a plaster cast!)? Will my massive splint heal me finally? Will Jesse get fat from not running? (Poor Jesse--he is worried about gaining weight, but so far he's actually lost weight... possibly muscle). Will Jesse and I ever be healthy simultaneously so we can run together? And so much more...

Thanks for reading about my misery ;-)

Life "to do" list

2008-05-18T11:30:00.000-07:00

I've spent a bit of time this weekend going through papers--chucking what I no longer want to keep, and sorting that which I do. I found this list of things I want to do in my life that I think I wrote some time early in graduate school. Thankfully I've been able to check a few things off. Here it is:

- Take a first aid course (not yet)

- Ballroom dance/swing classed (done)

- Kilimanjaro (not yet; I think I mean "climb Kilimanjaro")

- Ph.D. (done)

- Visit New Zealand (not yet)

- Visit Australia (not yet)

- Hike the Otter Creek Trail (not yet)

- Retrain a thoroughbred off the track (not yet... I have helped retrain thoroughbreds off the track, but since I wrote this list after I'd done that, I'm guessing younger Samantha wouldn't let current Samantha count that. I meant to get a horse fresh off the track and "completely" retrain it)

- Publish a photograph (not yet, I don't think. Once, in graduate school, someone told me that a photograph I had taken of a horse and rider going over a jump was being used in print advertising (a poster) for the Hoofers Riding Club, but I think they were thinking of someone else's photo and I never saw the advert myself )

- See Laura v. Reumont (that's Laura Silverman, nee von Reumont, a good friend of mine when I was a teenager. She lives in the Cayman Islands now, and this "to do" was to see her *again,* since clearly I've seen her before)

- Make a piece of furniture/wood object (done--I make a (very nice and very practical, I think) CD-sized "bookshelf" for Jesse for Christmas one year... I've added a couple photos of it below)

- Have a vegetable garden--organic (done, and I hope to do this again some day, when I have a house again)

- Date someone for more than 1 year & enjoy it! (ha ha... done... I guess that dates this list to before July 2000 then, since that's when I started dating Jesse)

- Voluntary Simplicity (hmmn. Not sure if I can say I've done this. And funny, I just saw an article about this in the NY Times this week. I guess being a graduate student would be "involuntary simplicity"? I'll have to think more about this and see what the "rules" are for Voluntary Simplicity)

- Learn to SCUBA dive (not yet)

- Learn to sail (not yet)

- Run a 1/2+ marathon (not yet... got up to 10 km races)

- Touch Antarctica (not yet... may have to save this for retirement, but maybe there won't be any ice on Antarctica then, so that won't be the same)

- Develop film myself (no... and possibly never will. Guess I didn't see digital coming :-)

Well, that's the list as it was (with my current comments in parentheses). Wonder what my "to do" list would look like now? I'm on too much of a roll sorting/chucking papers now to stop and think about it. Maybe I'll put making that list on my to do list... hee hee.

My Earth Day 2008 Project

2008-04-28T21:16:00.000-07:00

The way I have the title, you might think that this is an annual event. Well, it isn't yet. This was my first Earth Day project, inspired by my own blog post (see previous). On Earth Day (April 22nd), I bought 10 reusable grocery bags (nice black ones from my local independent food store), took them to work the next day, and left them in a pile with this note:

Free bag*

*with a catch

Giving you a free reusable bag is my Earth Day 2008 project. The real answer to “paper or plastic” at the grocery store should be “neither” as both are bad for the environment and sustainability. Non-renewable petroleum (fossil fuel) is an ingredient in plastic bags and paper bags, aside from requiring trees to be felled for their production (because recycled paper cannot be made into a strong enough bag for groceries), require more fossil fuel to be transported than do plastic bags. Reusable bags, like the ones provided here, are stronger than either plastic or paper and can typically hold more groceries.

The catch:
• If you take a bag, you must use it in place of a plastic or paper bag to bag you purchases at a grocery or other store. You cannot only use the bag to carry stuff (like beach towels/gym clothes/lunch) around in.

I suggest storing it in your car/truck/minivan so that you will have it when you go to the store. Remembering to take it in with you will probably take a bit of practice but you must endeavor if you accept one of these bags
You may get 5 cents off your purchase for each reusable bag you use!

Please take only one for now
Samantha

Things went only okay the first day. One person took a bag and told me that she had been using paper bags because she thought they were better than plastic but now she knew better (score 1 for me and the Earth). At the end of the day, I took the bags and sign away in part because I didn't want the janitor to help himself overnight (he has a reputation for helping himself to things in our break room... sodas, candy etc.) and in part because I thought my project had failed miserably. Jesse's grandfather had died late the night before, and I mention this seemingly random bit of information because it might help you understand why I was feeling a bit despondent in general (remember too that I am generally agitated about the state of the world, as alluded to in my previous post, and I haven't even mentioned my career/family agitation but it's there too). But, I also understand the nature of my coworkers (of which I currently have 14 in addition to "the boss") a bit and knew that they were just being a bit hesitant about jumping in. The next day, one person asked me what happened to the bags and said she had wanted to take one but hadn't got around to it--I gave her two (she's just an undergraduate, so I considered it "early intervention"). Then, a couple of days later, I put four of the bags out again, and three were quickly snapped up. Today, put the remaining four bags out and one has been taken. No reports yet of people actually using them, but here's hoping.

Should I join them or beat them?

2008-04-20T09:29:00.000-07:00

"Sometimes you have to act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can’t prove that it will" --Michael Pollan

I was seriously going to write a long blog entry today or in the near future about one of the major sources of the stress I've been feeling lately: the environment. I was even composing my blog entry in my head as I was running yesterday, and coming up with the title. See, the environment (or more, The Nature Conservancy, a group that works towards preserving the environment) is the cause that gets most of my charitable donations every year. But I don't just give money to good causes and hope they take care of everything on my behalf. Back in high school (i.e., ~1989-1993), I wrote an essay about how humans are destroying the earth (where's my Nobel prize?). When voting, I consider the environmental and science policies of the candidates first and foremost. I commuted by bike for 9 years (and now I carpool), I've used reusable shopping bags since way before they were cool (and endured dirty looks from supermarket baggers because of it), I pull my co-workers plastic bags out of the trash at work to bring home to dispose of dirty cat litter (questionably environmentally friendly, I know, but at least I'm reusing the plastic bag before it goes to the landfill), I've been vegetarian for 20 years (in case you don't know, mainstream meat production is a major source of environmental damage), I combine as many chores as I can into one outing in my car and plan the shortest route, etc. etc. But lately, I've been even more anal about things. I recycle every scrap of paper, I limit my purchases much more than I used to, I get mad at companies that send me catalogs I don't want (which is all of them) etc. The thing that stresses me out about all of this is that I feel that all my actions are so unlikely to help anything--I think of all the people who needlessly drive large SUV's, all the people who just buy buy buy stuff they don't need, then toss the packaging into the garbage rather than recycling it (I live in an apartment building--I've seen what gets tossed into the garbage (plenty of recyclables), and what gets tossed into the recycling bin next to it (not much, and some things that shouldn't be there)), all the people who toss their garbage out their cars (lately, I've been picking up after them at the lake I run at), all George W. Bush's anti-environment policies, and on and on. All those people are counteracting all my positive actions, and I feel so useless. And it's stressing me out. Well, then I was doing my usual Sunday morning perusal of the New York Times today and saw that Michael Pollan, one of my favorite people in the world right now (because of the things he writes about) had written part my essay for me:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/20wwln-lede-t.html?hp

Here's the relevant part for what I was talking about above:

"Let’s say I do bother [to do something about climate change], big time. I turn my life upside-down, start biking to work, plant a big garden, turn down the thermostat so low I need the Jimmy Carter signature cardigan, forsake the clothes dryer for a laundry line across the yard, trade in the station wagon for a hybrid, get off the beef, go completely local. I could theoretically do all that, but what would be the point when I know full well that halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who’s positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I’m struggling no longer to emit. So what exactly would I have to show for all my trouble?"

What Michael said.

For the record, Mr. Pollan goes on to argue that we (I) should keep trying, using growing our own vegetables as a good example (I am a member of a CSA so get my vegetables locally... is that close enough? I also grow my own rosemary on my deck ;-) ), and that WE need to act rather than waiting for the government to make rules to MAKE us change (when's that going to happen anyway?). And hopefully, going "green" will go "viral"--that if I set a green standard for those who know me, it might just catch on, become the cool thing to do. So I won't give up hope yet.

A tag--7 facts about me

2008-04-16T21:45:00.000-07:00

To aid Kirsty's self confidence, I'm participating in my first and perhaps only blog tag. The rules, which I will break, are:

1) Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog
2) Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird
3) Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs
4) Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog

My response:

1) Done!

2) Facts. About me. Hmmn.

- I was conceived in Irvine, California, but born in Johannesburg, South Africa. I went back to Irvine for the first time about a year ago, just for the day.

- My sister used to call me Panthernetic, Pantherfart, many other names with "fart" in them, and Woes Kumale (long story... it had to do with her thinking I was always in a bad mood). Also Foo-foo or Foof, which is what she still calls me.

- A word I remember learning about as a kid: "lethargic." I learned it because my horse riding teacher, Nathalie, referred to my horse, Wally, as "lethargic." I didn't know what it meant, so I went home and looked up in a dictionary. My sister told on me the next time we went to the stables (in that she told Nathalie that I had to look that word up). Nathalie was right--Wally was lethargic. Once, an American came to visit us (in South Africa, where I was living) and since she was a horse rider, I let her ride Wally. She made him look so good! He wasn't acting lethargic at all. Even though I rode horses for years after that, I never did learn to make a lazy horse move more energetically.

- I don't ride horses any more. Riding horses takes a lot of time and a lot of money. But I don't think a day goes by when I don't imagine myself riding a horse (and riding the horse much better than I do in real life). When I'm in a car, I imagine I'm galloping down the road on a very big horse and jumping the road signs. When I'm in a "slow" seminar at work, I sometimes imagine an emergency when someone comes running into the room with a saddled horse and yells "who knows how to ride?" and they need me to go galloping off on the horse to help someone in trouble. Which I do, and then everyone I work with is all impressed, since they don't know I know how to ride horses. I kid you not--I really do have that daydream. Laugh all you want. I think it's funny too. I don't always imagine the horse I'm riding jumping or galloping, by the way... I imagine doing dressage (horse "ballet"... a discipline that requires horse and rider to be highly trained and that demonstrates control and communication between horse and rider) at times too.

- I've been a vegetarian (ovo-lacto) for 20 years. The reasons I don't think I will ever be a vegan (though in theory I'd like to be one): butter, sour cream and marscapone. And grilled cheese sandwiches. I do try to limit my dairy (other than items on the above list) and egg usage and one day maybe I'll write about how I manage to bake some things without eggs.

- I'm listening to Silversun Pickups while I write this. My colleague and friend Carl is letting me give the album a whirl, since he plays them at work sometimes and I always say "who's this again?" I'm enjoying it. I wasn't sure at first.

- My favorite musicians of all time are Neil Finn (as singer of Crowded House, or all on his own) and A-ha. For all of you (meaning the 2-3 people who read my blog) who remember A-ha only as the singers of the 1980's hit "Take on me," I'll have you know they still put out CD's and I like their new music as much as I like their old music.

That was a lot less painful than I thought! I can even think of other things I could've written about.

3) and 4). I'm breaking these rules. There are only three people who I know read my blog: my sister, my mother and Kirsty. But hey, if there is someone else out there reading this, feel free to nominate yourself for this tag.

Things that will make you think I'm weird

2008-03-30T14:44:00.000-07:00

I found this information written by my mother (actually, the last bit is in my handwriting) in a notepad as I was sorting through some papers today:

Sat 8/9

Tumwater 7:25 am

102627

Missoula 8/10 6:35

103189

Gillette, Wy 8/11 6:35

103810

Albert Lea 8/12 6:35

104513

What does it all mean? Well, when I moved to Madison, WI, to begin graduate school (1997), my mom drove across the country with me in my "new" Honda Civic (my first car... my parents paid the down payment on the loan for it as my college graduation present) then flew back to WA on her own. I say "new" because it was 10 years old and had >99000 miles on it when I got it in June, 1997. We left from Tumwater, WA, where my parents were living and where I had spent two months living that summer. It took us most of 4 days to do the drive, doing ~10-11 hours a day, and the above records the time and place and current mileage on my car as we set out each morning. If you know your geography, you'll notice that we avoided staying in S. Dakota, preferring to spend the night either side of it. We did stop at the corn palace in SD though and, years later, a roommate of mine visited SD and reported back that it wasn't as bad as I assumed. So, sorry SD. I shipped nothing to myself when I moved... everything I took to Wisconsin was in that car, though I didn't pack it above the height of the rear window. My mother was allowed one small suitcase :-) And my bicycle was on a rack on the back. I have a print photo of it somewhere and I'll scan it when I find it. Since I didn't have a place to live in Madison yet, we drove around for a couple of days with the car still fully packed while looking at places to rent (we stayed in a hotel). Finally, I rented a room in a privately-owned house and the owner allowed me to unpack everything into her garage and leave it there while my mother and I headed up to Wausau to visit our relatives there. I sold that Honda Civic for $750 (it was over 17 years old and had about 130000 miles on it, if I remember correctly) the week I moved to San Diego--decided it wasn't worth another drive across the country, particularly since I started in my new lab only 3 days (Fri-Sun) after leaving my old lab. The day I left Madison, it was 1F there (and 75F in San Diego) and the Honda's trunk was frozen shut so I had to put my suitcases in the back seat when Jesse drove me to the airport. A couple days later, the new owner took possession of it. That car served me well. It got almost 40 miles to the gallon on the highway (33 in the city in Madison's winter... 37 in the city when the weather was milder).

Okay, that wasn't so weird, but this is :-)

It's my left hand photographed yesterday morning. I took it to record the state of my poor nails... on my index finger, my nail is almost fully grown out from when I cut through it on Christmas Eve as I was slicing an onion (it took me a couple of days to realize I had cut through the nail... I wondered why it was so sore and why it was bleeding so much!). Last weekend, when I was rearranging the couch cushions, I bent back my pinkie nail, leaving a nice bruise and forcing me to cut it off below where it overhangs my finger. I managed to scrape most of the dried blood out of it a couple of days ago, so you can't really see that (particularly not because it is out of focus). Then, yesterday morning, I bent back my middle finger nail while making my bed (my nails were soft from the shower I just had). So now it is all bruised. That will teach me for letting my finger nails get long.

And more flowers

2008-03-09T09:31:00.000-07:00

The flowers this time are wildflowers from Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, a couple of hours away from San Diego. Jesse and I went there yesterday to catch this year's spring wildflower bloom and weren't disappointed. To read more about it, please see my photo website.

I know I've been a bad blogger lately, but I've had more to do on the weekends lately than there is time to do it all in, so blogging has taken a back seat (and I'm way behind on emails again).

Flowers and more flowers

2008-02-17T07:26:00.000-08:00

Flowers
Jesse and I don't have any Valentine's Day traditions. What I mean is that each Valentine's Day is different. Some years we do nothing other than give each other a hug, and some years we exchange candy. Jesse sometimes makes me "Luv-E Duv-E" mix CDs (I'm up to Luv-E Duv-E Volume IV) with love-themed songs (not the sappy kind... you wouldn't find those songs in his extensive CD collection!) and sometimes we make each other cards. Well, this year, I made a fancy dessert (more fancy than yummy, but it wasn't bad) and he had flowers delivered to me at work! I've never got flowers for Valentine's Day before, never mind delivered ones! The flowers are a bunch of alstroemerias.

He was surprised that I didn't bring them home on Valentine's Day, but my reasoning was that if I left them at work, I could spend the whole of Friday admiring them and I was sparing Jesse the pollen (since he's allergic to flowers). But, with Jesse's permission, I brought them home on Friday so I could admire them over the weekend. Well, when I got home from having my car smog checked and doing the grocery shopping yesterday, I found Jesse feeling miserable and blaming the flowers on his agonies (nausea, sinus headache, chills etc.). So I moved them to my bedroom and cut off all the anthers (pollen holders). We also opened up the windows and it seemed to help him a bit. He's still sleeping, so I don't yet know how he's doing today (hopefully better). You can see the cut stamens in this photo.

More flowers
Then, I woke up at 6:45 am today (Sunday), which is earlier than normal and, for once, was not because some early-morning golfers decided to shout at each other (I live next to a golfcourse and am frequently annoyed by golfers being loud, urinating in public, and/or setting off their car alarms). I don't know why I woke up then, but once I was awake there was no going back to sleep because I was too excited, thinking about a vacation Jesse and I are starting to plan. We've been saving to go on a big trip this year, and had been considering going to Australia (neither of us has been there before). Yesterday, we finally got around to more seriously thinking about our trip, and we're now thinking of going to South Africa! There are parts of South Africa I haven't seen but want to, so our preliminary plan is to rent a car in Cape Town and go for a ~10 day excursion up the west coast then inland to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and back (or, continue to Johannesburg... rental car companies allow one-way trips, for an extra fee). We're thinking about doing this in September or so, which is when Namaqualand will be in bloom! I hope this trip comes to fruition! I've already been thinking about what camera equipment I'll want to take, whether I should get another memory card for my camera, and how much cash I should take (from my trip to Denmark for a conference in 2006, I learned that taking US $ cash is the best way to exchange for local currency). I've even thought about what luggage I should take and which Pick 'n Pay in Cape Town we should go to buy food for the drive. Perhaps some of those thoughts could wait? Oh--one other thing I have thought about doing, while in Cape Town, is to go on a bike ride through the Cape Point Nature Reserve. As long as the baboons don't get us. I'm sure I'll be writing more about this in the coming months.

Quick update on my resolutions

2008-02-10T22:38:00.000-08:00

- Losing weight: no go
- More exercise: fine (I ran 4.5 miles yesterday and 4 miles today, for example!)
- Work on PF: bought a splint to wear at night... doesn't seem to have helped yet :-( Will keep trying
- Still not picking split ends
- Blog trolling still way down

So, mixed success, but at least I've stuck to some of them :-)

A few odds and ends

2008-02-10T22:16:00.000-08:00

My project this weekend was to make a cover for my stand mixer. Here is the finished project:

I had to learn how to make bias tape in the process, and found this website very helpful for that.

Something else I did this weekend was to finally buy a muffin pan so that I could make my first batch of cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (see previous post). They turned out great! I made the "Tiramisu" ones...

Sorry... did that photo make you hungry?

And that was my weekend.

The week in review

2008-02-09T07:57:00.001-08:00

This is the post I never got around to writing last weekend, so this is really about the week starting January 28th, the best day of the year: my birthday!! I like the fact that my birthday is a celebration of me :-) This year, I was particularly spoiled in the number and quality of gifts I got. I already knew what my biggest present was, since it had been living at the foot of my bed for a few weeks: a stand mixer! My sister and parents got together to buy it for me. Jesse and I already love having it and I have plans to sew a cover for it. Here's the stack of gifts:
In the back is the mixer, of course. Draped on it is an AWESOME T-shirt I got from Jesse that says "Powered by tofu!" on it. I love it. On top are some cards I got. On the floor from left to right at the back are: "The elements of style" by Strunk and White (I do a lot of writing as a scientist; Jesse gave this to me), "Persuasion" by Jane Austen (also from Jesse), "Vegan Cupcakes take over the world" (a cookbook; from my sister), a "Mansfield Park" DVD (from Jesse), a box of notecards (from Jesse's mom) and a book by Andy Goldsworthy of his fantastic natural sculptures (from my parents; do a google image search with his name for an idea of his work). In the front are a pair of silver and garnet earrings from my parents, and an enormous bar of chocolate from Jesse's mom. As I said, I was particularly spoiled this year!

I also had two birthday meals courtesy of Jesse. One was Sunday brunch the day before at our favorite all-vegetarian restaurant, Jyoti-Bihanga. We'd never tried their brunch, which they don't have every week. We were a little disappointed because they seemed understaffed and they were continually out of plates or food or coffee or water or water glasses, and our table wasn't bussed from the previous occupants until the end of our meal. But I feel bad saying anything bad about them, because they do have excellent food and I highly recommend their restaurant. I told Jesse that we'll have to give them one more chance for brunch, then decide if we should just never go to brunch there again, or if it was just a bad day for them. Of course, Jesse and I go out to brunch about once every two years...

On the day of my birthday, Jesse and I made two cheese fondues for dinner: one with Jarlsberg cheese and one with goat cheese. The goat cheese one just tasted like warm goat cheese, so was "okay." The Jarlsberg one was more a classic fondue and was awesome. We dipped bread, broccoli, apples and dried apricots. We don't have a fondue pot: we just served it in the pots we'd heated it in on the stove. I'd been inspired by a recent New York Times article on fondue. For dessert, Jesse made me a (Key) Lime pie (with normal limes, not Key limes). Yum! He baked the crust and filling the day before and it smelled SO good. When it came time to eat it, he made the meringue topping. It was so pretty, I took some photos.

A slice of the finished product:
We so loved the first pie, and Jesse appreciated how simple they are to make, that he made another one this week, with real Key limes that I got at the grocery store last weekend. The second one is significantly more tart (Key limes are more tart than regular "Persian" limes), but I like that. [For my 2007 birthday, Jesse made me the tartest lemon cake with lemon frosting--it was awesome too.]

With my birthday celebrations over, I returned to life as normal, except it wasn't a normal week at all! Starting January 30th, I had jury duty. This is the second time I have been called up to the San Diego County Superior Court in the three years I've lived here. You only have to report for one day, unless you end up on a case or, as I've discovered, you get called into a courtroom where the jury selection takes multiple days. The first time I got called up, I didn't get called to a courtroom until the afternoon, but it was for a murder trial that was predicted to take 2 weeks and I didn't get kicked off until the third day of selections. For murder trials, the lawyers get to kick a LOT of people off, I have discovered. I think I was the 17th person the prosecutor kicked off (if I remember correctly, he had 20 "freebies," so he waited a long time to kick me off, especially considering that I had been in the jury box from almost the very first minute we were in the courtroom). This time, I got called in the very first group to a murder trial as well. One that was predicted to take 4 weeks! I wasn't very excited at the prospect of being on a jury for 4 weeks, I have to say. I knew I'd be working evenings and weekend and court holidays (there are no jury trials on Fridays for example, though the judge assured us that he and the lawyers would still be working) but even so, I'd fall behind in my research. And, I knew other people in the lab would suffer too, since I am frequently sought after by lab members who need questions answered. Well, long story short, I got kicked off by the prosecutor in the afternoon of the second day. I was the 5th person she kicked off (the lawyers don't provide a reason for excusing jury members in this phase of the selection, but I presume the prosecutor was nervous about having me on the jury panel of a case that was going to involve DNA evidence... I'd been specifically asked if I work with DNA, which I do). The murder in this case had taken place in 1997!

Jury duty took a lot out of me. I had an hour commute each way (drive to park-and-ride, take two trains, and walk several blocks to get there, then go to work by doing the reverse, but taking the train past the park-and-ride to go to campus... Jesse picked me up on campus and took me back to my car later) and even though there were many breaks during the day (they take 1.5 hours for lunch!), I'd be concentrating so hard while in court that I was exhausted at the end of the day and was actually mostly useless for doing lab work in the evening. During the breaks (including the 35 minutes we waited the second morning for a potential juror to show up, which he never did (can you say "contempt of court"?)), I read... first, I read a couple of scientific papers for work, then I switched to a shortish novel, The Life and Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee (takes place in South Africa). I finished all but the last few pages of the book in those two days! I haven't read that intensely for pleasure since I was a teenager, I don't think!

Well, I've gone on longer than I should, as usual! This past week wasn't nearly as interesting, so you won't have to read about it.

Take care.

New Year's Resolutions

2008-01-27T09:06:00.000-08:00

No, this is not to update you on resolutions I made at the beginning of 2008. That would be the normal thing to do. I am actually only putting my resolutions into effect tomorrow. Which is my birthday and is therefore a new year of a different sort. I'll explain: at the beginning of the year, I was agitated. I was very much dreading this year. I was in no mood to make declarations about a "new me." So I decided that I would ease myself into some resolutions and try them out before I turned them into rules--a "practice run"--then use my conveniently timed birthday as my new beginning.

Before I get started on listing my 2008 resolutions, I want to write a little about my resolutions from last year. One of my resolutions last year was very successful. I had resolved to eat more whole grains, and fewer white flour/white rice items. I totally did it! I now understand the difference between whole wheat flour and whole wheat pastry flour (the former is for yeast breads, the latter is for everything else, like cookies, cakes, pie crusts) and use at least 50% whole wheat flour (or pastry flour) in most everything I make. I marginally increased my consumption of brown rice (which I really do prefer to white rice in terms of taste and texture, it's just that it takes so long to cook that keeps me from always eating it) but mostly just decreased my consumption of white rice. I haven't been all that good about eating other whole grains... I did use a bit of bulgar (bulghur?) wheat and barley in my cooking this past year, but I don't remember using the other grains I'd previously tried out (quinoa, kasha) much. [Note to self: I should eat more varied grains.]

Another of my resolutions from last year is an embarrassing one to admit in this public forum, but maybe admitting it will be good for me. I pick at the split ends of my hair. Some of you who hang out with me in person probably already know that. I actually used to do it in full view of my coworkers, because I do it when I am deep in thought... and as a scientist, part of my working day is dedicated to thinking! I found that picking my hair helped me concentrate on thinking, because it was mindless and kept me from other distractions. At the beginning of 2007, I resolved to stop this pointless habit, and for at least the whole of January, I did. I had one little slip up on January 1st or 2nd... I pulled off a split end without even thinking about it, then realized that I was going to need to pay more attention. Anyway, I did start picking at my hair again, but stopped numerous times over the year telling myself, "is this really how you want to spend your time? is this really something you should be doing in public?" etc. By the Christmas break, I had re-resolved to stop and, so far, I've been very good and don't even remember the last time I picked at my hair. I still notice my split ends, but when I'm tempted, I tie my hair back. I hope I continue to not pick!

Last year, I also made the classic resolution of losing weight. I failed miserably. I gained weight. I blame a lot of it on my getting really sick in January and the rest of it on depression. While sick, I COULDN'T exercise for almost a week because my body wouldn't have been able to take it. And that got me out of the habit. To state in plain words what I may have alluded to before: I have (what feels to me as pretty bad) plantar fasciitis in my right foot, and have a mild case of it in my left foot. I have some undefined problems (2, possibly related, but that announce themselves in distinct places) with the left side of my pelvis that can cause me a bit of pain and a lot of discomfort. And my lower back is very sensitive and frequently gets tweaked. Once I got out of the habit of exercising through the pain, I found it mentally very difficult to force myself back into exercise. I decided to take a few months off of regular exercise in the hopes that that would allow my feet to get better (I'd had PF in my right foot for about 7 months at that time, now >1.5 yrs; the pelvic problems I've had for years, so they're chronic, life-long problems in my eyes and, anyway, I took time off of exercise when one of the problems first showed up... after about 6 months, it improved enough that I started exercising again). [I did actually run occasionally January-April, but no more than once a week, and even that I stopped for most of the rest of the year; I picked my upper body toning work back up around the mid year... 3 days a week, very consistently. Yay!] I gained a little bit of weight, but mostly lost muscle, so really I gained more fat than a scale would tell me. And then my ongoing aches and pains and my ongoing lack of a "real job" and poor prospects for one led me to depression. And that led me to increase my dessert consumption and pre-dinner snacking. I gained about 7 pounds over last year. This has made a very big dent into my amazing 15+ pound weight loss in 2004 (my 30th birthday was coming up...), especially when added to the 3-4 pounds I'd put on 2005-2006. And that has led to further depression.

I'm really getting away from my original plans for this post, but I do want to record this here: my logical way of thinking serves me well as a scientist. It also makes for a good voice of reason in my head. However, I spend a lot of time thinking about "how fat I am" (yes, for those who know what I look like, I know I'm not very fat by common standards, just well-padded). I didn't used to... it started in ~2003 or so and now I'm obsessed. The voice of reason says "spending so much time thinking about how fat you are and how much you'd like to look better in pants is foolish. If you are this concerned about your weight, why not just lose weight? You've done it before. You know that all you have to do is take in fewer calories than you expend. You know that reducing portion size is what has worked for you in the past. You don't have to deprive yourself of anything... you just have to eat less of everything." And the voice of reason is right. Yet, I have not been able to get myself back into my 2004 habit of eating less. Sigh.

*****

Okay... I stepped away from the computer for many hours at that point of this ever longer essay and have returned in no mood to ramble (originally, I had planned to opine on the subjects of cellulite and physical aging... aren't you glad I'm going to skip that?). Getting to the point: my resolutions!

- Lose fat. Will do by eating less (have been practicing this for the last week at least) and resuming regular cardio exercise (see next item)
- Do cardio exercise regularly [yes, through the pain] (have been exercising almost daily for the last ~2 weeks; has taken my right foot to new levels of pain; see next item) [Note on other forms of exercise: I love toned arms so much (yes, I suffer from vanity), that I have no problem sticking to my weight-lifting routine for my upper body. And, two physical therapists have now told me, and my experience has convinced me they're right, that I am going to have to do "core" strengthening exercises for the rest of my life, to hold my pelvis together. I have been doing these exercises regularly since I went through another round of physical therapy starting in ~August, and appreciate the resulting reduction in pelvic pain enough to keep up with core exercises. So, no problem there either. It's cardio I need to work on]
- Try harder to improve PF in feet (I've also been through physical therapy sessions for the PF, but stopped doing the stretches I learned from my PT when I decided (after my last session) that they actually made things worse. But, I wasn't exercising then, so maybe the stretches will be more constructive now? It's worth a shot, even if (while I'm stretching my calf muscles) my coworkers make constant jokes about my "holding up the freezer" or "holding up the wall" (I am supposed to stretch every hour and I don't have time to always go find "somewhere private" to stretch and I use solid objects in the lab to push against, hence the comments). I need to start icing my foot again (yes, even though ice feels extra cold in winter!) I also ordered a splint today... it's to keep my foot flexed while I am sleeping). Maybe I'll return to doctor and ask to see a podiatrist, at my dad's suggestion. Want to avoid surgery and cortisone shots like the plague.
- Don't pick at split ends (so far so good)
- Do less random blog trolling (also going well--I signed up for my favorite blogs in Google Reader and so now don't actually go to people's blog pages where I may get derailed by juicy-looking links to their friends' blogs etc.)

...maybe I should have finished this earlier... I can't remember my resolutions any more! I probably had some work/career-related ones in mind, but my brain isn't putting them into coherent thoughts right now. Oh well, since I anyway think I've already bared my soul more than I should have in a public forum, I'll stop here rather than try to make up some more resolutions. Maybe I'll write again if I remember them. Or maybe I'll be too busy trying to keep these. By the way, I do recommend the "practice run" approach--for all you know, I practiced a few more and found them too hard to keep so decided not to mention them :-)

Happy birthday to me, and may my 34th year be filled with kept resolutions!

PS. Just thought of a candidate resolution: be more succinct (and use fewer asides) in blog postings and comments on other people's blogs. Oh, who am I kidding? I'll never be able to stick to that one!

You know you live in southern California when...

2008-01-18T07:04:00.000-08:00

...you see blossoms on trees in mid January. With apologies to all my friends in the northern climes who are not enjoying winter right now! [Btw, some Californians say that the high cost of living here is due to the "sunshine tax" we have to pay.]

Update on sewing projects

2008-01-13T11:58:00.000-08:00

My sewing energy of late has been going into improving the diaper-and-wipe bags I mentioned in a previous post. Following Kirsty's suggestion, I have added a snap to the straps, to allow them to be looped around something like a stroller handle (I also paid attention to a stroller that someone rolled by me the other day and saw how it didn't have a place that the bag handle could just be draped over... what's with that?). Here's the one end of the strap and the back of the snap (pardon my stray hair).
While picking out the pearlescent snaps at the store, I found some magnetic snaps on clearance ($0.97 for 6 sets!) and thought they'd be a nice alternative to velcro for the flap of the bag. They're a bit tricky to work with, because I have to add several additional layers of fabric to support the snaps (they're somewhat heavy). Here are the magnetic sides of the snaps on the body of the bag. In this photo, you can also see where the handle snaps on (on the right).

And here are my latest two sets of bags... the blue ones have velcro to close the flap, and it was so much easier making these than the kinds with the magnetic snaps! But the snaps do look nice and won't get all fuzzed-up like the velcro. These blue bags have a front pocket, unlike the blue bags I made first (previous sewing post).
And here is the overall view of the red and black bags with magnetic snaps to close the flap.
One of the blue bags and one of the black bags are going to Celia, who is a graduate student who works down the hall from me and is due on January 27 (though earlier would be better in her mind!). I met her when she was about 5 months pregnant and barely showing. She worked at the bench next to me for a few months and it's been fun to watch her belly grow. I bought a pack of baby wipes yesterday to give her with the bags...
Wow, that was an interesting photo! I'm also giving Celia two bibs... one is the bib with iron-on vinyl that I showed in my last sewing post, and this is the other one...

I haven't been working on baby bibs lately but will get back to them now that I am getting a bit bagged out (I have two more that just need the final assembly and several more that I have most of the fabric cut for, so I've really been busy with the bags). I haven't quite figured out how to incorporate Kirsty's suggestion of making them so that moisture doesn't go through, other than using vinyl. I'm going to try the sew-on vinyl next and will keep looking for other waterproof fabrics too.

I'm sure your heart is racing after reading such an exciting post :-) But I wanted to document my sewing successes before I give them away.

Last portraits of things once loved, and a first portrait of a new thing already loved

2008-01-06T11:41:00.000-08:00

I took down our Christmas decorations today. The living room looks a little bare now! I took a photo of the tree (a ~2 foot high artificial tree) during its last minutes...

The small gourd decoration with the Santa face on it came from a couple in Washington state who sell homemade stuff... I had bought kitchen towels from them and they threw in the painted gourd as a thank you. The other gourd-like decorations are plastic Halloween ornaments I bought at an after-Halloween sale and made into hanging decorations for my tree.

Because my parents drove down to San Diego to see me for Christmas, they could bring more stuff with them than my mom usually can on the plane (this was the first time my dad visited me in San Diego). They took this opportunity to bring me a table! It's a dining table that has two leaves that fold down, making the table quite compact. Jesse and I love having a table (when we've had guests over for dinner before, we've had to sit around our coffee table. We once had a 8.75-month pregnant woman over and I felt quite bad for her--she ended up sitting on the floor). It fits perfectly around the corner from our kitchen. Here it is with one leaf up...

The downside to the table is that sitting on a wooden chair reactivated the "acute" type of pelvic pain I have (a pain in my butt, to own the truth). I must be too used to cushy couches/chairs. So, that's why the pillow is on the one chair now. (The photographed chairs are ones I already had, I just didn't sit on them until now... previously, Jesse had used one as a sitting place when he puts his shoes on, and the cats had used the other one as a perch)

Jesse is allergic to many things, including flowers. But, I like flowers. So, soon after he left San Diego to go visit his mom for the holidays, I went and bought myself a bunch of white carnations. Well, I didn't think they'd last longer than the two weeks Jesse was to be gone, but they have. Jesse has been sneezing like mad the last day, so I may throw them out later today (Jesse says I don't have to, but his sneezing tells me otherwise). Here's their last portrait...

In putting away my Christmas decorations, I was re-acquainted with a set of potholders I'd recently put away in my linen closet. These potholders saw me through graduate school and now three years beyond. They're almost old friends. I'd put them in my linen closet when I made myself some new potholders and was a little nervous about whether or not they'd actually protect my hands from heat (I did not make the old set)! So, I held onto the old ones until I could figure out if the new ones work. They do, so I decided I had to get rid of my old ones. As you can see, they were well used...

And that's it for today.

The cats and their ribbon

2008-01-03T21:39:00.000-08:00

A piece of ribbon found its way out into my living room sometime around Christmas. Alice, one of my cats, has spent many hours sitting next to it since. On rare occasions, she plays with it. [She has this thing with "her" toys... she sits next to them and we can't really get her to budge, even if she is somewhere where she could get underfoot (normally she is pretty good about staying and getting out of the way). We think maybe she's indicating to us that we should help her play with the toy, but we're not sure.] She has, in fact, spent so much time sitting next to this ribbon that I have been worrying about her getting too obsessed. So, I have been hiding it most of the time and only bring it out to play with occasionally. Last night, both cats were sitting on my lap and Jesse brought out the ribbon. Their eyes sure lit up (Clara likes it too, she's just not obsessed with it like Alice is). Jesse thought they were looking so cute that he went and got my camera and took these photos.

The cats have just spied the ribbon.

Clara makes a valiant effort to get it. To get it good. Alice is ready to back her up.

"Oh no!," say the cats. "We dropped the ribbon! Whatever shall we do?"

The end.

Sewing projects

2007-12-29T18:28:00.001-08:00

As I mentioned in my "annual" letter (see previous post), my next sewing projects are baby-related items. Specifically, diaper-and-wipe bags (much less bulky than a regular diaper bag, to be used on-the-go) and bibs. With some money I got as a Christmas present, I went crazy at a fabric store yesterday and, since I already had a stock of fabric I'd bought for the projects, I am now nearly swimming in fabric choices. So exciting! In the last ~24 h, I have made 4 diaper-and-wipe bags and two bibs and I can't wait to show them off.

First, the diaper-and-wipe bags. I must give credit to the website where I found the pattern. I did alter my bags a bit from the pattern: I put handles on, so adjusted everything a bit to accommodate that (and I plan more changes to get the handles to fit better in future renditions). Also, on my second set of bags, I added a front pocket. I'll probably put pockets on all future bags.

Here are the bags I made, which are already in the mail to my dad so he can take them to South Africa with him at the end of January to distribute to two friends there:

The blue ones are the first ones I made, without the front pocket. As you can see, the flap closes with velcro. The lining of the bags and the handles is in a complementary color and pattern.

The pocket on these black & red bags is edged with the red fabric, where the lower piece of velcro is, and goes all the way to the bottom of the bag. Black velcro would have looked better... I'll have to get some next time it is on sale.

And here are the bibs. I got the pattern for free at this website. I'm trying out different methods to see what I like best. The first one has ribbon folded in half for the trim, so is slightly bigger than the other one, since I didn't lose the seam allowance. I bought the ribbon a few weeks ago, but love how well it goes with the fabric I bought yesterday (I am particularly proud of this piece in general)! The illustration on the front is from a piece of fabric that has lots of blocks of images (the illustration on the blue bib is from the same stock).

Front of first bib. I think maybe I should put a plain piece of fabric behind the illustrated panel in future bibs, so the background pattern doesn't show through as much. (Aside: I plan on making a diaper-and-wipe bag with the pink & green striped fabric... that was actually what I had in mind when I bought it. I really like this fabric). I just noticed that I should aim to center the stripes when cutting the fabric. I think it would look even better then.

Back of first bib... it's a flannel, so nice and soft. The bibs also have velcro to close them. (Side note: my skin is particularly sensitive to labels in clothing, so I've cut most of the labels out of my clothing. Anyway, I took care to have the loop (soft) side of the velcro be the one pointing towards the skin, in case it brushes the baby's skin while the bib is being put on. I also rounded the corners of the velcro pieces so those wouldn't poke the baby... just trying to make it something that wouldn't irritate MY skin, were I a baby still).

Front of second bib. For this one, I tried iron-on vinyl (hence the reflection of my camera's flash). The advantages of that to the user is that it can be wiped clean... and the advantage of that to me is that I can put stuff on the front of the bib without sewing it on. Since the illustration panel I used on this bib didn't have a border I could fold under to sew, the vinyl came in handy. A disadvantage to the vinyl is that the whole bib can't just be thrown into the washer (btw, I've pre-washed all the fabrics in the hopes that most of the resulting items can be machine washed). The patterned blue fabric behind the illustrated block is the same as the lining for the blue diaper bags. I used it to make the illustration stand out a bit better.

This is the back of the vinyl-fronted bib. No vinyl on the back. Perhaps it's a bit odd to mix blue and pink on one bib, but I'm not a fan of having all pink stuff for girls and all blue stuff for boys. So there.

So, what do you think? If I have any readers out there (I'm a real optimist, can you tell?), and particularly if any of my readers happen to have kids, do you have any suggestions for improvements? How is the handle length on the diaper-and-wipe bags? Should I put snaps on the handle so that it can be looped around something (like a stroller) more easily? I'm going to try sew-on vinyl on a future bib... is vinyl a good idea, or is the ability to throw the whole thing in the washer more important?

It's a good thing that Jesse is out of town, because this is what my "sewing room" (i.e., our living room) looks like in one place. I'm going to clean up now.

"Annual" Holiday Letter

2007-12-15T13:34:00.001-08:00

Calling this my "annual" letter is a bit of a joke, since it's been about 14 years since I last wrote one. I sent this letter out to some friends and relatives. Blogger is not letting me upload a photo, but maybe I'll add one another day.

Dear All
When I mentioned the idea of writing a “Christmas letter” this year to Jesse, there was a minute or two of silence as we tried to think of one thing that happened to us this past year that would be of any interest to anyone other than ourselves. We broke the silence only to admit that we hadn’t thought of anything and in fact are still, a week later, trying to come up with something. In the meantime, I’ll fill you in on some of the things you may find less interesting.
Earlier this year, I joined the “in crowd” by signing up for a facebook.com account, which allows me to “connect” to my in crowd friends across the world on the Internet. This has brought me much joy as I have communicated with school friends I haven’t heard from since the day I left South Africa (in 1992) or even before. On a similar (Internet-related) note, I finally discovered what all the fuss was about blogs (online diaries/journals, essentially). It all started when one of the people I reconnected with through facebook started her own blog (that’s you, KRS). She is a good storyteller with interesting things to say, and I got thoroughly drawn into her blog and her stories about her husband and four kids. Then I started reading her friends’ blogs, and then their friends’ blogs etc., and I felt immersed in this other world. After a few weeks of deep addiction to reading these blogs at all hours (except, mostly, work hours), I cut back to a few blogs that I still read regularly. It inspired me to start my own blog, which is only three entries long as of today, far from interesting and may die out soon. But if you want to read my random stories (and they truly are random), here’s the site: http://senseandmissense.blogspot.com
The most exciting thing that happened to me all year is that a coworker and two of my friends became pregnant, one of whom gave birth on Thanksgiving. I have never had people I know so well be pregnant, and so this is all new to me. It naturally got me thinking about having kids of my
own, and though there are no immediate plans for that, at least I am seriously thinking about it.
This year was a very “crafty” year for me. After finally finishing a quilt I had been working on for a few years, I decided to try knitting again (first time since I had to knit for Home Economics in school). I knitted three scarves, two of which went to an ex-student of mine who is now at graduate school in Dartmouth and one of which went to my mother (I happened to finish the first scarf intended for my student while visiting my mom, and she liked it so much, I gave it to her). I have also been making placemats, trivets and potholders (sewing projects… knitting taxes my arthritic hands a bit) like there’s no tomorrow and have acquired patterns and bought fabric to start my next sewing endeavor: baby bibs and diaper-and-wipe pouches (see paragraph above… sorry to ruin the surprise of what I’m going to be sending you in the coming months, KC&CC!).
You may have heard about the massive wildfires we had in southern California at the end of October. The fires didn’t come any closer than about 8 miles from where Jesse and I live, but they did cause our places of work to be closed for over four days, which resulted in us being housebound (in large part to avoid the smoky air outside). I will try to remember to put the story I wrote about my week during the fires up on my blog in case you’d like to read more.
And speaking of work, I’m sure you’re wondering, as are so many of our family members, when Jesse and I are going to get real jobs. Well, neither one of us are having the successful postdocs we were hoping for, so let’s just say we probably won’t have real jobs for a while yet ☹ But I will mention one specific work thing: after so disliking the formal research ethics education I got as a graduate student, I was surprised to very much like the formal ethics training I got as a postdoc (a requirement for a fellowship I am on). My interest resulted in me being a panelist for a research ethics seminar series this academic year. I find I quite like dispensing what wisdom I have gained during my years as a scientist.
I hope that next year, if I sit down to write an “annual summary” newsletter again (it has been ~14 years since the last one I wrote, so don’t hold your breath), I will have more interesting news. Jesse and I have saved money for a trip next year. We haven’t decided quite where to go yet—I would like to see the Great Barrier Reef before all the corals die (climate change is taking a toll on them) so that’s a possibility. Botswana is another possibility, and so is a road trip of the western US to see places like Yosemite, Big Sur, Yellowstone, the Redwoods etc. I’ll be sure to take photos wherever I go, and they’ll be posted to my usual photo-storing website: http://ssorchard.smugmug.com (feel free to browse). Stay well.

Samantha

San Diego Wildfires, October 2007

2007-12-15T13:25:00.000-08:00

I originally published this on my facebook page and am now publishing it here for your reading pleasure. If I refer to photos anywhere, I didn't bring those over from facebook.

This is a long story that documents some of my adventures and thoughts during the week San Diego country was on fire: 21-28 October. The first part has more information on the fires, since many people asked me about them. The rest is the details (too many for most of you, I'm sure!) about some of the things I did and did not do and the things I thought. I hope someone other than me enjoys this! I've added bold phrases to help you pick out what you want to read.

Starting on Sunday, 21 October, 2007, many wildfires burned in and around San Diego county. Some 500 000 people were evacuated from their homes at the peak of the fires a few days later. Though the fires are not yet out, as of this writing, 7 people have died directly from the fire, and something like 1300 houses (and many businesses and outbuildings) have been destroyed in San Diego county. Soot and ashes have dirtied a lot of houses that were downwind of the fires, so many people who had evacuated but did not lose their house spent this past weekend cleaning up the mess. The exact cause of the various fires has not been established; campfires set by illegal immigrants or other campers, downed power lines and arson are some of the possibilities. Four years ago, San Diego county was severely burned by what is called the “Cedar Fire” and ~24 people were killed and ~2400 houses destroyed in that fire. In 2005, San Diego experienced one of the wettest winters on record (I arrived that winter). That rain spurred a lot of vegetation growth, much of which died and dried up in the years since, which have been a period of drought (we are currently in one of the worst droughts on record in SD… one extreme to another!). Certainly that excess of dry brush fueled the fires, as did the Santa Ana winds that came from the east and brought very dry (less than 10% humidity), very hot (high 80’s (°F)/~30°C…. and this is Autumn), and very strong winds (gusts 30-70 mph/65-112 kph). The wind itself did quite a bit of damage, knocking over trees etc. [By the way, Santa Ana winds are predicted for this coming weekend too, but with lower wind speeds. Will we have more fires?]. The first I knew of the fires was when I went running on Sunday night and saw a giant orange cloud heading our way from the east… I thought it was a dust cloud from the desert until “breaking news” cut into the regularly scheduled TV programs that night. The situation got worse and worse until Wednesday afternoon, when Jesse and I returned from a trip to an ice-cream store to read the first optimistic reports.

I did not have to evacuate, though I had a scare on Monday night: a fire started in Mission Trails Regional Park, one border of which is only a block from my apartment. The fire was in a central region of the park and was extinguished before it ever threatened my apartment complex. That night, before we had heard about the Mission Trails fire, Jesse and I packed our “evacuation gear” in case we needed to leave on short notice at 3 am or something, as many people north of us had to. Our gear included a tent, camping mattress, dried and canned food, toiletries, cash, our important papers (passports, financial records, renter’s insurance etc.), food for the cats, the cats’ carrier, toilet paper, can opener, flashlight/torch etc. The reason for the tent is that, because of San Diego’s “favorable” climate, the major evacuee gathering site was an open-air sports arena, and evacuees stayed in tents there.

All schools and universities in San Diego were closed at least Tuesday-Friday last week, and people were urged to stay home (if our home was not in the path of a fire or otherwise under a mandatory evacuation order) to keep the roads clear for emergency vehicles and evacuees and to save our lungs from the smoke and ash outdoors (in addition to the 7 people who died from burning, several people downwind of the fires died from respiratory distress… typically older people or those with pre-existing breathing problems). Jesse and I had our windows closed and the air conditioning/central fan running almost continuously after Jesse started having problems with the smoke (he has allergy/sinus/chemical sensitivity problems) on Tuesday. His symptoms went away, so clearly our air filter on the central fan works (we replaced it after the worst of the fires was over and it was quite dirty).

But what I really want to write about are the things I did and did not do during my unexpected time off. The main reason to me is posterity, and to remember the thoughts I had during this strange time.

Let’s start with what I did do. Note that just about everything took place on my couch (not only do I love my couch, but I don’t have a desk or a dining table). The cushions are noticeably more compressed than they used to be.

- Together with Jesse, I watched the extended version of all three Lord of the Rings movies. That’s something like 11 h of entertainment! We watched it in about 6 chunks. I (alone) also watched the first two episodes of a BBC mini-series called Wives and Daughters and enjoyed that (last two episodes arrive from Netflix tomorrow).

- I edited a scientific review article that Jesse has been working on since the end of July (and he’s been doing little else… very few experiments (“bench work”) at lab, and he works on it evenings and weekends at home too). It took me a day and a half to edit it for a number of reasons: it’s not a topic I was familiar with (for any biologist types reading this, it’s on anterograde and retrograde signaling between the nucleus, chloroplasts and mitochondria in plant, yeast and animal cells… for the biologist types who didn’t understand that, don’t worry… I didn’t know what anterograde and retrograde meant either before Jesse started telling me about what he was working on). Also, I started editing on Tuesday, and since I was still in fire alert mode at that point, I was checking the TV/internet every 15 minutes for updates. And, many kind friends were writing me emails wanting to know if I was okay, and I felt compelled to send off speedy replies to calm their nerves. So, I wasn’t as efficient in my editing as I could have otherwise been.

- I analyzed a whole bunch of my own data and made pretty graphs and sent out data and an analysis to a collaborator in Scotland (this is the email that took me ~1.5 h to write that I talk about below).

- I baked cinnamon-raisin bread. Twice. We have a bread machine so I used that to make the dough. Yum-ee.

- I called the phone company to get reimbursed for a late charge they fined me even though my bill is supposed to get paid automatically. Last time I tried to call them about this, I was on hold for 40 minutes before giving up. This time, I was on hold only for 10 minutes, but then was on the line with a representative for 30 minutes (I counted). It was a bizarre conversation, with a good 2-3 minutes of silence every time the guy looked something up (such as my account information). I am not exaggerating (again, I counted). He also didn’t sound at all like someone employed to be in customer service. He sounded like a guy who would show up at your house to work on a broken telephone line and who would grumble/slur everything he said. I actually thought he was playing a joke on me and that I was being recorded for a Candid Camera-like show (afterwards, I told Jesse that if I do end up on Candid Camera that they hadn’t really fooled me and that I’d known all along). In the minutes of silence, I thought that either he had actually hung up on me and there I was foolishly staying on the line or that he was getting up and walking around the office and giggling with his friends before getting back to me. The good news is that he totally agreed that I shouldn’t have been charged $5.82 and promptly reimbursed me.

- I gave fashion advice. This was one of the strangest things that has happened to me in a long time (apart from the conversation with the phone company 10 minutes earlier… again I thought maybe I was on Candid Camera)… I was walking back to my apartment from getting the mail in my Crocs (I have foot problems, so don’t tease me), roughly-tied-up hair, jeans and T-shirt. I was sweaty from our hot apartment. A clearly-agitated woman asked me if I could help her and my first thought (sadly) was that it was a trick. She was wearing a long brown dress with a lace-up back and asked if I could help her get ready for the Marine Ball since her husband wasn’t around (there are a lot of military people in San Diego). She first wanted me to tie her dress for her, but when I said “sure… lift up your hair,” she asked me to follow her. I thought maybe her Marine husband was back in the apartment and she was luring me there. It was a passing thought. Turns out she just wanted to move into a hallway that was less exposed. So, I gently laced up her dress and tied a knot at her request. It was hard not to pinch her seemingly-delicate skin. Then she asked me if I thought the (brown with turquoise and yellow beads) color of the dress suited her. Why someone wearing Crocs would look qualified to judge this I don’t know. She told me that her husband said the color didn’t suit her and that she should wear her red dress instead. Then she asked me if I would look at her red dress. Now she wanted me to follow her to her apartment. Second minor panic. But, she left me outside her door while she went to get her red dress then held it up for me to see it. It was knee-length and had clearly been attacked by a cat or something and had loops of fabric pulled out. And the poor woman then said that her cat has the fleas and she has flea bites all over her legs and that she didn’t think she should wear the red dress because then everyone would see her messed up legs… she pulled up the ankle-length brown dress to show me her legs, and sure enough they had red marks all over them. I told her that, though I was biased because brown is my favorite clothing color, I thought the brown dress was far more fitting for a ball and that she looked good. Then she asked me how she should do her hair… I’ll spare you the rest of the details because I’ve gone on for too long now, but let’s just say that I was laughing all the way back to my apartment at the absurdity of what had just transpired. I thought about her (she is in her early 20’s, I estimate) a lot for the next day, wondering what kind of a relationship she must have with her husband that she was so worried about not wearing the red dress even though her husband preferred it. How did the ball go, I wonder? I thought about the things I could have said to her, since she was looking to me for wisdom. Should I have told her that the best thing she could have worn would have been confidence?

- I sorted through several of the drawers in one of my dressers. I reorganized them and got inspired by a stack of fabric I had bought from a clearance sale on fabric remnants last year (see next item).

- I made a set of 8 Christmas-colored placemats. They reverse to one of two different colors (four each).
I also got almost all the way done with a set of “trivets” and potholders, some of which match the Christmas color, and some of which match the reverse color.
For those of you who remember the failing grade I got for home economics when we had to sew, you might be surprised to learn that I sew things on occasion. I am too. I still wouldn’t get a passing grade for technique because I am more concerned with being a speedy sewer rather than a neat/perfectionist sewer. But, I do get things made. “A” for effort?

- I hung out with the cats. I think they LOVED having us at home all day. Clara spent her days on the couch next to me. Alice spent a lot of time on my left arm (she’s there as I write this).

- I took lots of photos of the smoky sky and a fire’s glow at night, as you can see on my facebook page.

- I listened to a few tapes of music I recorded from the radio when I was a teenager or from CD’s I’ve since got rid of, chose songs I liked, and bought them on iTunes (I had been given a $15 gift card). Then, I threw away the tapes. I have another 30 tapes or so to go (and only $4 left on my gift card…).

- I whitened my teeth with some of those whitening strips. I don’t at all enjoy having the strips in my mouth. A few years ago, I tried the brush-on type of teeth whitening and that was much more pleasant. I also thought once again how unfair it is that Jesse, who drinks a lot of strong coffee and tea, has very white teeth and I, who essentially doesn’t drink coffee or black tea, get stained teeth. An oral hygienist once graded my oral hygiene so highly, she ignored the check boxes where she was supposed to choose “Poor” “Fair” etc. and made her own box for “Excellent” or something even better. I didn’t know that she thought it was so good until the next hygienist who saw my chart remarked that she’d never seen someone rated “off the chart.” Apart from bragging, my point is that I take care of my teeth. And yet they yellow easily.

- I thought about charity and whether or not I should make an effort to be part of the “relief efforts” related to the fires. Before the relief effort was fully up and running, they were making appeals on TV for tents and blankets to be donated. I have a few blankets. I like them all. Should I have donated one? Should I have taken the tent from my evacuation pile and given it away? Should I have volunteered my time instead of working (note that I did try to keep “work hours” during the day and did the things like sewing on the weekend and movie-watching at night)? At first, they appealed for volunteers, then they said they had to turn away volunteers because there were too many and that they didn’t need anything donated except money. I have carefully chosen the organizations I give charity to every year. I give a percentage of my before-tax pay to them. Should I have given extra money because of the fire? I decided no. Most of the people who evacuated are better-off financially than I am. It wasn’t like they were suddenly cut off from their credit cards and bank accounts. They had their cars, the restaurants were open… did they really need my canned goods? They appealed for blood, but I can’t donate blood because my body doesn’t tolerate it well (the Red Cross told me, after an hour of repeated fainting the first and last time that I tried donating, that I wasn’t a good blood donor). The firefighters get paid and have chosen that profession. I pay my taxes. I have bought renter’s insurance. I have made sure I have savings in case I lose my job or have to take a long leave. If other people have chosen to build in a fire zone, or have neglected to properly insure their property, or have consumed themselves conspicuously into debt, does that mean I should carry them not that their gamble has cost them? I felt bad about my thoughts at first, but I’m at peace with them now. I don’t regret not helping/donating. I know that some people who were affected by the fires probably could really have used my help. There were stories of the manual laborers who kept on cleaning and kept on gardening in neighborhoods that were being evacuated because they were scared they’d lose their jobs if they stopped. I haven’t heard that any of them died or were injured, but they’re the people I feel for the most in all of this. The people you didn’t see on TV. Another thing that helped assuage my guilt is that companies and restaurants ended up donating a lot, and they got a lot of publicity for it. I think that’s fair.

But the things that struck me most last week are the things I didn’t do. Time flew during my days on the couch. On Friday, a work-related email I wrote took ~1.5 h to write and I was just amazed each time I looked up and another 30 minutes had gone by. And I wasn’t just sitting there day dreaming… I was putting concerted effort into that email the whole time. The overall effect of time flying was that I felt so unproductive. I kept feeling that if I knew I was going to get this time away from the lab, I would have planned a long list of goals (science papers to read, emails to write, computer files to sort). But after the first day at home, I realized I was going to be at home for the rest of the week (and so theoretically could still have made that list of goals) and still every night I felt like I hadn’t got much done. I spoke to my mom one day towards the end of the week (she didn’t know about the situation here until I called her on Wednesday night, by the way, and apologized for not worrying about me appropriately) and told her how time was flying and she said that she is finding retirement to have the same quirk. She’d always imagined all the things she’d do if she just had the time, and now that she is retired (she retired in April), time flies by and she still doesn’t feel like she has the time to catch up. Well, that greatly diminished my hopes for my own retirement! But it has also taught me not to long for free time in the hopes that it will let me finally catch up on all the emails I owe people, or will finally let me do all the other things on the to-do list in my head (scan in all my photographs, sort my “To be sorted” folder that grows in size each day on my computer, finish reading the stack of National Geographics next to my bed so I can get started on the stack of books I want to read, write a novel (that’s really near the bottom of the list) etc.). And particularly, to not put my life on hold until all those tasks are accomplished, but to rather realize that life is what is going on right now. I must either decide to tackle those tasks in the small moments I get free each day, rather than hoping for a large chunk of free time, or I must not feel that those tasks are so important that I have to stress about them.

Life has essentially returned to normal for me now, and the thoughts I had during the week the fires raged are slowly fading from my mind. I’ve preserved what I can here. If anyone actually read all the way to this point, I hope my ramblings were somewhat entertaining or thought-provoking and that you don’t feel like you’ve wasted your time.

Thanksgiving 2007

2007-11-23T14:03:00.000-08:00

I woke up at 6:35 am, sans alarm. So much for sleeping in—and good old body, knowing that by that time on a Thursday I should be awake! I did my physical therapy exercises (that I am supposed to do a few times a week for the rest of my life, if I want my pelvis to not cause me too much grief), de-cluttered the kitchen counters in preparation for a day of cooking, had a shower, then got started on the first recipe: pumpkin pie! I went with an all whole-wheat flour crust this year, and it turned out almost as good as a white flour crust, so I’ll be sticking with the whole wheat in the future. While the pies were cooking, I started on the brown rice and cranberry dish. I’d done the hard part of cutting 4 cups of cranberries in half, one by one, last Sunday, since I’d had the cranberries out for making the Exploding Cranberry Relish (= cranberry sauce, with the twist of having jalapenos in it) that day. After the salad came the stuffing, and Jesse peeled the potatoes in preparation for what I think is his favorite dish—mashed potatoes. Then we combined our efforts on the “turkey substitute” dish: a vegetarian meatless loaf. That’s right, no tofurkeys or tofurtles this year!

After we got the meatless loaf in the pans and into the fridge, got the kitchen tidied up and yet another load of dishes done, Jesse and I went to a nearby Lake Murray for a pre-meal run. Jesse did his usual ~5.5 mile run and I heaved myself (that’s what it felt like anyway) through just over 4 miles (I’m supposed to be getting back into running slowly, for the sake of my feet and pelvis, so I’m running slower than Jesse these days. Also, he’s picked up the pace of his running dramatically since I was last a regular runner!). We got back to the parking lot and were finishing up our post-run stretches when I noticed a hand protrude from the passenger window of a pickup truck window in the parking lot and a tissue fall to the ground from said hand. I was appalled. Littering is one thing. Littering at “my” lake where I go to enjoy the outdoors/natural environment aspect of it is another thing. Thanksgiving or not, I marched over to the truck, picked up the tissue and threw it into the lap of the female owner of the offending hand saying “I think you dropped this” and starting walking off. I heard her say “I meant to drop it there” and I turned around to find the tissue falling to the ground outside her window again. Well! I marched back, picked it up and said to her with incredulity, “Have you no passion for life? For the environment?” to which she said, “Excuse me!!” impertinently and rolled up her window. She looked shocked that I would be so rude as to address her, and a little scared of me—I think she thought I was a crazy lady. So I chucked the tissue behind a cargo net in the bed of the pickup truck, and picked up a tissue I found behind the truck and tossed that in too. It was at that point that I noticed that the (male) driver of the truck was using binoculars to observe something… maybe birds? He was there to admire the environment with a woman who cared nothing for it! I do hope he enjoyed me rebuking the woman. Maybe he secretly hates the way she litters? I can only hope. I went back to where Jesse was… he didn’t know what had been happening so I told him the story. He was amazed (at her and at me). I have replayed the events over and over in my head, and I now think that she truly didn’t see that there was anything wrong with dropping the tissue where she did… I think maybe when she said “I meant to drop it there” that she was thinking “That silly woman who picked it up… thinking I dropped in by accident. It was nice of her to pick it up for me, but there was no need” So when I started talking about her lack of passion, she probably had no idea WHAT I could be going on about and that’s why she got scared and rolled up her window (at the time, I thought she was just being rude and getting my out of her face by rolling up her window). Who knows. I should have told her that she’s welcome to litter as much as she wants in her own driveway, but that I’d appreciate that she not do it at “my” lake, so that I could get her to see my point of view about the incident a bit better (hindsight, you know). As I initially marched over to the truck, I briefly thought about pointing out that littering was illegal, but decided not to say that because, duh, everyone knows that and I’m not one to believe that just because the government mandates something, it must be the right thing to do (though I am against littering, of course). But overall I’m happy with my handling of the situation. When I saw the tissue drop for the second time, you can bet I had to hold back a swearing and yelling instinct. In my “maturity,” I know that calm and collected is a more effective way to go. Are there really people who, if they actually thought it through, would not think there’s anything wrong with littering so blatantly at a public park? I think maybe I met such a person today.

Hang on, what was I meant to be writing about? Oh yes, Thanksgiving. So I got home, got the meatless loaf and stuffing into the oven and realized I had enough time to prepare another dish—sweet potatoes with apples and walnuts in a buttery-sugary syrup. After I got that into the oven, it was time to cook and marinate the beans, cook the corn and set the table with the Christmas-y placemats I made while stuck indoors during the recent wildfires. Jesse mashed the potatoes, adding garlic to his share (not for me, thank you! I like my potatoes bland). Then, we brought it all together and sat down on the floor (no dining table, only a coffee table) for a lovely Thanksgiving dinner, with sparkling cranberry juice to drink. For dessert, it was pumpkin pie with some of the “stiffest” whipped cream I’d ever had… I was quite worried while Jesse was whipping it that it was only seconds away from becoming butter. Then, as you can perhaps imagine, it was time make some creative rearrangements in my fridge to get all the leftovers to fit. While I put food away, Jesse did a hill-high load of dishes. Go Jesse! Now as I write, the dishwasher is finishing the rest of the dishes and everything is almost back to normal in the kitchen. Ahh. But I still haven’t figured out the woman in the truck, and don’t think I ever will.

The day my car fell down

2007-11-21T16:38:00.001-08:00

In late summer, 2005, I attended a work-related conference in New Hampshire, and was away for about a week. The day after I came back to San Diego, I decided to go shopping. I got in my car, put it in reverse, let out the clutch, and slowly starting backing up while turning the wheels slightly to maneuver out of the parking spot. Kerklunk. I heard a noise as if I had just driven over something, and my car shifted perceptively. I got out and went over the the passenger side, since that's where I'd heard the noise from. Instead of the flattened object on the ground I expected to find, I found that the tires on the passenger side of my car had fallen off the bolts that normally hold them on and that my car's body was now resting on the semi-upright rims of my tires. I then noticed that my hubcaps and lugnuts were missing on that side... yep, someone had stolen them! I had just had new tires put on my car ~2 weeks earlier, and I wondered if that's what they had been after. The first photo is a close up of the one tire... it's hard to see what's going on, but do notice that no bolts are protruding through the four holes near the center of the tire. The second photo is from the back (my car is on the right... that's Jesse's old Buick on the left) and you can see the tilt in my car towards the passenger side (the right side, for the South Africans reading this).

I pride myself in being relatively freak-out-proof... I am normally calm in "scary" situations. However, I took it so personally that someone had shown that little interest in my well-being (I mean, what if I hadn't been trying to turn my car while reversing? How far could I have driven before my tires fell off? Could they not have left me a note "hey, look out, I stole your lugnuts so your tires will fall off if you drive"?) that I was instantly upset. I went back to the apartment and woke Jesse up and told him with panic in my voice that I needed help. That woke him up a lot quicker than usual! I felt silly being so worked up about it, but told him the story and asked him what I should do. Most people probably don't know this about me, but I am quite handy at "fix-it" stuff. Being a landlady in graduate school certainly helped. I do plumbing, electrical, painting, woodwork, oil changes etc. So for me to ask Jesse (who has none of the forementioned abilities... sorry Jesse, love you anyway) what I should do was very unusual. Anyway, to keep this from being a runaway story, I'll say that I got him to drive me to an auto parts store so that I could buy replacement lug nuts, then chickened out of jacking my car up on my own (since TWO tires were off, I didn't know where I should put the jack), called a towing company and ended up telling the guy how to do things (he was a bit slow, and he couldn't get his jack in place, so I lent him mine). Later, I went to a dealer and got the OEM lugnuts (since the first ones were generics and didn't fit very well) and a set of rim locks (locking lugnuts--you need a certain "key" socket to get them off. I didn't know what rim locks were before I moved to California, land of car thefts... I had previously had my indicator (turn signal) light bulbs stolen in this same garage, which is gated, as you can see in the second photo). And about a year ago, I bought two replacement hubcaps off of eBay... my car was 11 years old when this happened, by the way, and it was the original, plastic, scratched up hubcaps that were stolen. I got similarly scratched up replacement ones (hopefully not the exact same ones!). So my car is all back in one piece.

Later that day, I called the police to report the theft. The policeman who took down my information panicked slightly when I said that my tires fell off--he was apparently worried that I had made it onto street and picked up some speed when this happened. If only the thief had considered that!

The story behind the picture

2007-11-12T16:55:00.001-08:00

I have spent much mental energy trying to think what I am going to use a blog for in general, and also what I'll write about in my first entry. But all that thinking made it start to feel like this was getting far too serious, so I decided to just quickly choose a photo off my computer and write about its background.

This fine specimen of a cactus you see here was purchased at the Madison (Wisconsin) farmer's market by a woman who worked in a laboratory down the hall from me when I was a graduate student. But when she bought it, it looked nothing like this! It was small enough to fit into the lid of a soft drink bottle. This student was worried because her cactus wasn't growing and decided to give it to me to see if I could "rescue" it. I gave it some water, put it on a sunny ledge in my then-lab and it started growing. Instead of just getting bigger and keeping its shape, it put out a little "bud" on top of it that soon looked like a mini version of the main part of the plant (the original plant is the whitish part at the base in the photo). But it kept on growing and eventually outgrew the first part of the plant. As I kept watering it, it kept putting out more and more buds, mostly in a straight line. I transplated it to a bigger pot... and, well, I think the photo (which is a scan of photos I joined together) tells the rest of the story. As you can see, it was so "stringy" that there was no way it could support itself. I have no idea what kind of cactus this is or what shape it normally grows in, but I can't imagine natural selection would let it grow like this out in the wild! I seem to remember some incident when the cactus fell over onto someone and either they tried to catch it or it scratched them or something... my memory fails in the details but you can imagine the possible outcomes of human vs. cactus. I took this photo of it soon before I destroyed it by chopping it into bits and putting the bits in the garbage (I assume I wrapped them up to save a garbage handler from the thorns). It was getting to be too much to care for and worry about. I also didn't find it very attractive!

A follow-up to this story is that a couple of months ago, I purchased some antique botanical prints online from a place called "The Cactus Patch," which also sells cacti plants, including at the Madison farmer's market! I wonder if The Cactus Patch is where the photographed cactus started its life? Small world.