joygantic

Many Haps

Just a wonderful whirlwind at the moment accented by the BEST WEATHER OF THE YEAR.

Spring in Seattle always amazes me; the city just crackles with relief and smiles when the gray goes away.

My oh my.  If you're following along at home:

• House painting is well underway and should be completed this week
• Garden is going nuts
• BBQ and firepit season has official begun
• Boy, that Girl Trouble is sure the lovely and amazing
• Spent the weekend socializing my ass off and hanging out with many beautiful people in scenes that involved grilling, pinball, karaoke, laughing, firegazing, missing a birthday party, hugging a friend who announced she's having a baby
• Technology situation is somewhat stabilized and I'm remembering why I though Dell laptops suck
• We have an ambitious but doable plan to finish our backyard landscaping in the next two weeks
• We are now thinking about putting a hut in the backyard (but not in the next two weeks)
• I've submitted our application to the powers that bee at Burning Man so that 65(!) of us can have a ridiculously good time less than 90 days from now
• My hair will be changing drastically tomorrow
• A new batch of pix on Flickr

Folk Life!

It's Memorial Day weekend and that means it's time for the Northwest Folk Life Festival!

For the 15th year in a row, I will not be attending.  I just can't afford to blow my entire annual quota of hippies and drum circles in a single weekend.

Amazing Animal Face Off

I've been forwarding this video to people since I saw it on MeFi.  Lions attack water buffaloes, a crocodile tries to steal a buffalo calf from the lions, and buffaloes organize themselves and attack the lions.  It's 8 minutes long but it has a happy ending.

Reaching Crusing Altitude

I'm back! Mostly, anyway. 

The laptop theft was Act 1 in a three-part technology meltdown which, given that I'm like a version 0.5 cyborg, was a huge drag.  I lost some key personal files, which means of course that I'm an idiot for not having been properly backed up.  Mostly I've been suffering from no EVDO access (translation: being able to be online anywhere) and having my digital workspace scrambled.  Act 2 a broadband outage at home (culprit=bad WiFi router) and then, just as I was about to depart to LA, the curtain raised on Act 3 as my beloved Sansa Rhapsody music player mysteriously turned into a glowing paperweight.  Add to this feeling physically out of it while in LA this week--maybe I caught Dia's flu? Need a massage? Something?--and the last couple weeks have been thoroughly forgettable.

But I'm taking this all in stride and assuming it's just underbrush that needs to be cleared before we head into the best summer ever.  It kicks off this weekend with the final (for awhile) Girl Trouble Burlesque show on Saturday, followed by a wedding reception at our house on Sunday, culminating in a BBQ somewhere with friends on Monday.

I have to note that this technology spasm I've been having has been made much less debilitating by the shiny N95 that Nokia put in my hands a couple of weeks ago.  I often spend time talking about "convergence," but over the past couple weeks I was forced to converge.  My phone has been my primary out of office Internet/email connection, it flawlessly replaced my music player during gym workout and on airplanes, and while on one of those airplanes I snapped this shot of Mt. Ranier, looking about as gorgeous as I've ever seen her.

File Under: Huge Hassle

I left the office a bit before noon to grab some lunch and was back in my office about 15 minutes later. I noticed that the ball to my track mouse was on the ground and it was missing from my desk.  Weird.  I circulated in the office thinking I'd been pranked.  Upon returning to my office, though, I noticed that it wasn't just my track mouse that was missing--my laptop was gone.

Yup.  Taken from my desk in the middle of a work day. 

Nobody saw nothin'.  It's possible we'll find the thief's image on the lobby security cameras, but it's been nearly 90 minutes since the theft and neither the building management nor the police has showed up yet.  Most of my critical data is backed up, though I'm crushed to have lost the spreadsheet I've been maintaining daily since December in which I log my gym workouts, my weight, my travel, and our garden progress.  Nothing really serious, but a huge hassle.

Just over three years ago I had my laptop pinched from my hotel room in NYC.  I'm hoping that unlike last time, this time I can at least get the authorities to agree that it was stolen.

Us, Yesterday

Disrupted

I returned home yesterday from a week in Toronto/New York to find our ecosystem turned upside down.

The giant house built in 1907 on the giant lot across the street was torn down and carted away on Wednesday.  We knew that was coming eventually--five townhouses will go up in its place--but the speed with which it happened was stunning and devasting.

We never thought about it before but that wasn't just a house it was an urban ecosystem.  There were bushes and trees and lots of animals.  We live less than 20 blockes from downtown in one of the oldest neighborhoods in town and yet there are lots of critters cohabitating with us.  Last summer I discovered a raccoon family of five under our deck.  They moved on eventually, slowly, with an attitude that made it clear they were not 100% on board with the concept that this was "my property."  They share this sentiment with other inhabitants of our neighborhood who routinely decide that our hedges make the perfect place to discard an empty beer or a fast food container.

The destruction of the habitat across the street prompted a possum to walk across the street in broad daylight, and caused the squirrel population to descend into some miniature replica of Lord of the Flies.  The spring is a hard time for squirrels since many buried nuts have started to sprout and they've forgotten where they hid much of their food (I've never actually seen this stated as fact but, c'mon, there is no way a squirrel isn't going to remember where all their nuts are).

The squirrel migration destroyed my neighbor's tree.

A squirrel came into our house.

Alex promptly killed it was eating it on the carpet in the middle of Dia's office when she arrived home.  There was another squirrel sitting on the window sill taking in the whole scene and looking quite sad.  Friends tell me that squirrels pair up.  We're calling Alex "Widowmaker" from now on.

The oPhone

In Toronto

. . . where it's much warmer than it was last time I visited in March.  I have not seen much of this place, but I think I like it.  Sort of a mashup of San Francisco and New York.

The weekend was filled with work on the house and yard which will be a common refrain for the next several weeks.  We're getting the house painted, having new front steps and a mini porch built, and continuing our work on the garden.  It's good stuff.

Saturday brought Cinco de Mayo, fun with friends, and a pinata stuffed with booze, condoms, and fireworks. Safety third!

I'm in full on project mode--projects for work! for home! for fun!--so not much time for musing, I'm just doing.