The Mandelbear's Musings

02:34 pm - An outing with the (rolly)Cat

After yummy pancakes for breakfast, the flower_cat went out for a Mother's Day shopping expedition. Unfortunately we didn't find most of the things we were looking for, but we had fun anyway.

A little surprisingly, the wheelchair does not fit in the back seat of my car; it probably would if the passenger-side front seat were pulled up all the way, but that's unlikely to happen. The best way to get it into the trunk is to reach over the chair, grab the folded crossbars between the spokes of the far wheel, and put it into the trunk diagonally, wheels first. Comparatively painless.

We went to Valley Fair, the local mall, mainly in search of three things: a pewter bud vase and a purple laptop bag for the Cat, a new bathroom scale, and a pair of Keen hiking boots for me. We found the scale. You'd think that a mall full of shoe stores would have at least one selling Keens, but you'd be wrong. Macy's had an astounding variety of men's shoes, none of which I'd be caught dead in (but which would kill my feet in short order if I tried). Many stores had an astounding variety of handbags, very few of which were purple and none of which the Cat would be caught dead carrying. Most were so bad that I wouldn't have wanted to be associated with anyone who wanted to carry one.

After the mall we headed for home; I set a course past the Rose Garden, so we stopped there. The wheelchair worked well on the paved paths, but bogged down in the grass. At that point we changed modes and the Cat used it as a walker. It was delightful; it must have been several years since the Cat walked in the Rose Garden. I hadn't realized that she didn't know where the Royal Amethyst was located.

At that point we were both a little too hungry, so we came home and had lunch: yogurt, granola, and strawberries. A little bread and cheese for me, as well. Yum.

09:23 am - Happy Mother's Day!

A very happy Mother's Day to all the moms reading this, and most especially to my very own flower_cat. (I'll add my Mom here as well, though I'm pretty sure she's not reading my LJ. I'll call her in about half an hour.)

Meanwhile, I'm about to go wake the Cat and fix her some apple/buttermilk/buckwheat pancakes for breakfast.

10:08 Yummy. Hodgson Mill buckwheat pancake mix; substitute buttermilk for milk (it's what we had in the house...) and fold in half an apple, diced. (I ate the other half with blue cheese about an hour ago.) Served with maple butter we bought in the Toronto airport. As I said, yum.

10:18 The Younger Daughter brought down a lovely hand-made card, signed by both kids. She tried to apologize for not presenting a store-bought one, but we stopped her. Hand-made with love is always better.

Current Mood: cheerful

01:56 pm - TANSTAAFL

Went out for a business lunch at the Bombay Oven -- tasty, inexpensive Indian buffet. Unfortunately the company isn't paying for the parking ticket...

The really stupid part is that I saw the sign, it just didn't register that today was the first Wednesday of the month, and therefore one of the two days when I couldn't park on that side of the street.

08:46 am - A pleasant weekend

We spent a delightful, relaxing weekend with the jenkitty. She got up at some ridiculous hour to fly down from Seattle Saturday morning, and left Sunday evening. We (me, the flower_cat, and the chaoswolf -- the Y.D. wasn't interested in the kinds of things we had partially planned) piled into the van with Colleen's wheelchair and spent all day Saturday driving back from the Oakland airport (which has been extensively renovated since I was last there, and had surprisingly little traffic) by way of San Francisco.

The entire weekend was an exercise in real-time scheduling. We drove along the waterfront, passing up the food paradise of the Ferry Building because of large crowds and a lack of parking, past the tourist traps of Fisherman's Wharf, South on Van Ness, West on Geary past Japantown, and had a late breakfast at the Cliff House. Crab is a house specialty. Yum.

South on the Great Highway to Golden Gate Park, and parked under the de Young Museum. We need more museum time. The textile gallery was showing Turkmen weaving -- wow! The pace and interaction are vastly different when I'm wheeling Colleen around, but it wasn't unpleasant by any means.

After the museum we went next door to the Japanese Tea Garden. This was mostly a matter of Jen and Kat exploring widely while I tried to figure out how to get around with Colleen and the chair. On occasion I failed miserably; fortunately the Cat is still fairly mobile under her own power. No disasters.

Finally, we drove down to San Jose via Skyline Boulevard (as far as Woodside), took a turn past $WORK on Sand Hill Road, and tried to figure out where to have dinner. We'd originally identified a couple of places in Menlo Park and Palo Alto, but it was still too early and the Wolfling really didn't want her sister to be entirely left out, so we went home, let the Kitty take a nap, and headed out to Kobe, our favorite sushi boat place.

The evening was a combination of filking, conversation, and looking at the proofs of the wedding pictures, which artbeco brought over for us to sort through.

Sunday the Kitty slept in while I went out for bagels and Scottish lox, then a walk to the Rose Garden. There was time for Jen to have a bagel before going out "silly food shopping" to Cosentino's with Colleen. Colleen's been shopping there for nearly three decades; most of the staff are old friends. Dinner was huge pieces of lamb (which Colleen pan-broiled with Greek seasoning) with saffron rice and caprese (which I made). Quick, simple, and delicious.

All too soon it was time for Jen to leave. I combined the trip to the airport with dropping the kids off at their gaming session a couple of blocks down Coleman Avenue. All-in-all a delightful weekend; I just wish there was some way to do it more often.

Capped the weekend with a pleasant drive with the Cat.

08:14 am - Crystallography in the kitchen

The Physics of Chocolate (from this post by gmcdavid.)

Includes an actual cooking tip, down in the last two paragraphs, for tempering chocolate more reliably.

09:36 am - Household notes

I'm feeling very proud of my chaoswolf and flower_cat this weekend, for different reasons.

The Wolfling improvised dinner last night out of what was in the house needing to be used up: chicken with redeye gravy; and a potato, carrot, cucumber, and cheese casserole. Yes, you can cook cucumber (it's in the squash family, after all), but I've rarely seen it done. Tasty, in spite of timing glitches on both items. Both kids liked it, so that's a win.

The Cat is in the process of taking over control of the household investments and budget, as well as most of the marketing for my CDs. Makes good use of her phone and people skills, doesn't require standing up for long periods of time, and can be done at home. It's also essential for getting control of the credit cards, which have been bleeding money for years.

12:21 pm - Dietary note

Ok, so it seems that one egg and the equivalent of a slice of toast in the morning is not enough to sustain me through a walk before lunch. Not quite as bad as some of my past crashes, but I definitely need more protein in the morning.

On the other hand, it was a nice walk, around and through the Rose Garden. It's starting to bloom.

08:00 pm - Taxes, but apart from that...

This post seems to be written in blog order: most recent events first. Seems appropriate.

Just finished off the data-entry for the checkbooks. That leaves the paper receipts, which are a bit more work but also more interesting, and the Amex and Paypal reports.

Tasty dinner: scalloped potatoes, pork ribs with spicy peanut sauce, and carrot-and-raisin salad.

Went for a nice drive with the Cat this afternoon. Good to get out of the house and hang out together. We don't usually talk much; it's all about good company and comfortable silences. Spent some time working on a song -- still marinating.

Did a little shopping. Mostly Office Max for white business card stock for mini-fliers, little colored dots to mark ripped albums, 9V batteries for the travel guitar, and a package-opener. Fry's for a 2GB micro-SD card and a little USB reader that's no more than a 250%-longer plug. Came with a little plastic cover threaded onto a little lanyard of the sort usually used for cell phone charms, but it seemed unnecessary and I took it off.

Did the 4-mile walk by Los Gatos Creek this morning. Felt good. It always does. The weather was cool but a little too humid after last night's rain.

07:48 pm - All-in-all a pretty good day

A nice walk at lunchtime, and it looks as though $BOSS is going to buy off on my latest idea for a "research" project. I put "research" in quotes because what I actually seem to do is come up with ideas and build infrastructure that my coworkers can use to do things more traditionally thought of as research. Sort of like the people who design particle accelerators and electron microscopes.

My title is "chief software scientist". It really means "ageing hacker"; I figure that if you have to put "scientist" in the name of your field, you probably aren't one. Dad was a chemist. (On the other hand, his sub-field was spectroscopy, so he was primarily an instrument-builder too. Family tradition, along with folk music, computers and science fiction. *Sigh* -- he would have enjoyed the wedding.)

Left work a little early so that I could meet Colleen and the kids at Kobe, our usual sushi boat place. Emmy's grades came in over the weekend and weren't anywhere near good enough to earn a reward, but we were already planning on sushi for her 16th birthday, so that took precedence.

I'll be leaving shortly to take the Wolfling to school for her HTML final - it was a self-paced class, but there's a written final tonight. I'll be back 9:30-ish; there's no reason to spend 40 extra minutes driving when I could be spending it reading.

08:05 pm - Mostly better now

It was a good afternoon for a walk; I'm glad the flower_cat kicked my sorry butt out of the house and told me to take one. Walked for an hour by Los Gatos Creek, from where it crosses Leigh Avenue up to the little park in Campbell and back.

Started working on a song; nothing but fragments so far. I may just scribble them down and let them marinate for a while; if I go much further down that particular rabbit hole I won't get the taxes started until next week, if then.

The park was full of people; I had a nice little conversation with a girl who was sitting on a picnic table playing a guitar. Well, she looked like a girl, anyway, until her five-year-old daughter came over for a hug. They left when the little one fell down and scraped her hand. But I was able to show off a little, help her with a C chord (she's only been playing for a couple of months), and talk about music and kids for a while. Her name was Bonnie, if I remember correctly.

It's hard not to be at least a little cheerful with music and pleasant memories in my head. Even harder after tasty rabbit stew and steamed asparagus. We started the stew just before I left; I came back just in time to help finish it, and to empty the dishwasher.

Still no real handle on why that wave of depression hit me this afternoon, but it doesn't matter. Besides, I tend to write when I'm depressed. It might just have been the song trying to get out.

01:41 pm - I'm probably going to have to get this

Amazon.com: Brunton "FlipSticks" Folding Chopsticks
( image behind cut )
(From Gizmodo)

08:34 pm - Saturday wrap-up

It's been a fairly productive day. A short walk in the morning, followed by a trip to Gilroy to a jewelry store to get wedding rings. Looked for amethyst stud earings for the Y.D., who just got her ears pierced a few days ago. (The timing for that is a family tradition: my mom gives each of her granddaughters a pair of diamond stud earings on their 16^th birthday. Hers is later this month.)

Came home and installed a little key-holder to go next to the front door; this replaces the cup-hooks displaced by the new curtains. Basically just a 11" piece of pine 1x6 and a handful of assorted cup-hooks, but it matches the decor and gets the job done.

After a quick lunch (the flower_cat made chicken salad for sandwitches and to make some room in the fridge) I took off for Kohls, which is having a sale on dress shirts. Found one that exactly (to these old ursine eyes) matches the Wolfling's wedding dress. Score! No amethyst earings, though.

A couple of assorted stops, followed by a stop at the bank for cash. No other joy, though.

Came home to find the Cat about to order Chinese from a place we've been meaning to try for a while now: they're about 2 blocks from the house on W. San Carlos, and they deliver. Not my favorite, but acceptable.

Finally, I lowered the bed by 2" by removing the castors from the headboard end, and chopping off the bottoms of the foot posts to match. Nearly made a mess of it by assuming things when I should have measured, but it worked out in the end. Much improved, especially for the Cat.

Modulo the earings, which I never did find, it's been a pretty good day. I'll do some practicing next, and then probably go to bed a little early for once. Possibly quite early, depending on how the Cat is feeling.

12:49 am - Pan-fried red snapper

Melt 2tbsp butter in a large pan. Add about 1tbsp onion sliced into strips. When the onion is nearly cooked, move it aside and add fillets of red snapper. Flip them over while they're still uncooked on the top. If the fillets start coming apart in flakes, you've overcooked them.

07:03 pm - Nice drive

Went out for a walk this morning around the Rose Garden. The garden itself is rather sad-looking at the moment: it was pruned a week or two ago, and although there are lots of leaf-buds and a couple of flowers that presumably were left on from before the pruning, there are no new blossoms yet. Or even buds. The Wolfling had been talking about wanting wedding pictures in the Rose Garden, but in addition to being logistically difficult it looks as though the season will be wrong as well. We'll see.

Came back and had bacon and eggs for a late breakfast, then went out at about noon for a long drive with the flower_cat. I love our drives. They're one of the few times we're by ourselves with no tempting distractions or annoying -- or even welcome -- interruptions. Usually we talk; sometimes we just sit and enjoy each other's company. This time, not surprisingly, we mostly talked about wedding and travel plans. The long drive is about 4:30 -- over to the coast via State Highway 9, up 1 from Santa Cruz to Half Moon Bay, then back via 92 and I280. The coast route takes us past a big produce stand (closed, alas!) and a fishmonger's. Tonight's dinner will be red snapper.

After dropping by the house for a pit stop and to get the snapper into the fridge, we went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond for curtain rods and curtains. At vast expense, but they're pretty and we've been needing them for a long time. The general idea is to be able to curtain off the portion of the living room that used to be the master bedroom, so we can give guests sleeping there a little privacy. As a practical matter, the sewing room (originally a kid's bedroom and small even for that) only handles one person, or a couple with very little luggage.

We decided to head home rather than going to Barnes and Noble to pick up some books that Colleen had ordered. It had been a longish day, and the Cat was getting tired.

10:10 pm - Better yet

The Wolfling is getting tutoring in math now. Hopefully that will get her through the two classes she needs to graduate. Since her tutor (a family friend) lives most of the way to Palo Alto, the Cat and I proceeded from dropping her off to dinner at Chef Chu's in honor of Chinese New Year. We decided going in that a whole fish, while tempting, wouldn't have given us enough variety, so we had hot and sour soup, tangerine peel chicken, eggplant in garlic sauce, and fried bananas for desert. Yum!

Chef Chu's was my intro to Szechuan cooking when I first came out to California for grad school, 29 years ago.

Coming home, I found that the VIA board had successfully started up X, after the various network-dependent processes timed out. Thus encouraged, I hacked on it for a while and discovered that the onboard ethernet was now eth2. Go figure. I think it has something to do with the hotplug code that I stopped using because it seemed flaky. But it works now: not super fast, but more useable than its predecessor, and totally silent.

The runtime on my UPS is now down from somewhere north of 45 minutes to 39; not too bad, considering.

Hopefully I'll be able to get back to actual (music) work soon.

10:10 pm - January 3

A nice, mostly-relaxing day. Went in to work for a couple of hours for an important meeting, other than that I'm still on vacation. Had an anniversary dinner at Arya with Dave and Joyce -- did I mention that we spent New Year's Eve at their house? I don't think so.

Got in a walk in the morning, i.e. before it started raining.

With luck I may finally get to some recording tomorrow; there's always something that needs doing, unfortunately.

10:07 pm - State of the Mandelbear

(Cross-posted to healthy_fen and mdlbear.)

There have been several major changes in my approach to health this year, mainly brought on by a belated awareness of impending mortality and a couple of alarming sets of symptoms.

Walking: I've been getting in roughly three-mile walks most of this week. It's very frustrating: in order to avoid leg cramps I have to either walk slowly (i.e., my old pace that didn't give me much actual exercise) or shorten my stride to what to me is an unnatural degree. These days I usually pick the fast pace and short stride, but it's annoying to have to make the trade-off. I end up walking at about the same speed (3mph) regardless. I've gone back to power walking to compensate. Hopefully when I'm back at work I can cut off the usually-fascinating lunchtime conversations and the temptation to dive back into LJ in time to walk for an hour during the week, too.

Facehugger: I finally built a little shelf on the dresser beside the bed, and just last weekend bent up a piece of coathanger wire to hold up the hose. The combination really helps; it's a lot less likely to leak now. I can also sleep on my back without waking up -- that's a big win. I can't say there's been a huge difference in how sleepy I get or how much sleep I need, but I think there's been some. The silliest thing about it is having to shave about 1cm off the top of my mustache in order for the mask to seat properly -- first time I've had to shave in about 40 years. Well, it was a good excuse for a new backpack, anyway.

Nose-watering: Watering my nose seems to be roughly as effective as taking a standard dose of sudafed, and lasts for roughly as long: 6-8 hours. I've fallen into a routine: morning, before dinner, and about an hour before bed. Morning is, of course, combined with making coffee, and takes about 15-20 minutes. The evening wash is combined with brushing my teeth; I've gotten a bit better about that, too.

Diet: This is the newest bit of attempted behavior modification. It's my understanding that a reduced-carbohydrate, low-sugar diet is good for reducing both cholesterol and weight, so I'm going to try it. It's hard -- potatoes and pasta are both popular in this family. At least the rice we use is basmati, which is unique in having a low glycemic index, and I prefer whole-grain bread anyway. I've stopped eating fried-eggs-on-toast for breakfast and switched to omelettes. At least dark chocolate, and one alcoholic drink/day are still on the diet. By doctor's orders. So there.

With a little luck and more determination than I've shown to date, I might even survive another decade. We'll see.

08:49 am - Good morning!

Woke up to find that the flower_cat had been having a bad night of it, and had been awake for about an hour. Any excuse for some serious snuggling. Before she went back to sleep she suggested making muffins.

Krusteaz muffin mix is really trivial: just mix with water and bake. How much work can that be? The package fails to mention what happens when you pre-heat the oven to 400 after a major spill left over from the previous meal. Which the kids failed to mention. (To be fair, it may well have happened as they were taking the lasagna pan out of the oven, and they simply didn't notice.)

The billows of white smoke were certainly noticable, though; took me three go-rounds to get it reasonably clean. There will be oat-bran muffins, though. In about 4 minutes.

Meanwhile our new Caldera cooktop is working wonderfully; it provided an excuse for me to go out to the Container Store yesterday and buy new spice racks. We'd had an expanding plastic three-tier shelf, but the part of it closest to the cooktop had melted in an incident involving the back burner of the previous cooktop. Picked up a couple of last-minute gift items at the same time, and got in a little walking along Santana Row.

Current Mood: awake

09:10 pm - Weekend wrap-up: Puttering along...

Modulo my walks, a drive with the flower_cat last night, and a outing with the Cat and the chaoswolf this afternoon that I'll get to later, my weekend has mostly been spent puttering around the house. That's what I do when I'm trying to avoid, you know, real work.

I've reluctantly come to the realization that, if I haven't read one of those stacked-up magazines in the decade or so they've been sitting there, I'm probably not going to get to them in the next decade, either. And the ones that I have read, that are sitting in piles in the garage attic? Recycle time.

Note to self: it's time to stop when the dust starts making you sneeze.

Today was very pleasant. At the Cat's suggestion I went out this morning and got bagels and lox for brunch. Yum. House of Bagels might not be a real New York bakery, but it's close enough. Along the way I stopped at the nearby Whole Paycheck Foods to get some nose-watering salt. I asked for "uniodized" and got a blank look, but then I noticed the three-pound boxes of kosher salt on the top shelf of the salt section. Score! Less than $3 for pure sea-salt with guaranteed, God-gets-mad-at-you-if-you-cheat no additives. )Tried it this evening: works just fine.)

After brunch the Cat and I took the Wolfling to Stanford -- it seems she's been curious about the place where her parents met and fell in love, not to mention other places on campus she's been hearing about. As it turns out, the coffeehouse appears to be either defunct or being renovated -- what used to be the main entrance is now a bike shop; the tables are there but there's no sign on the door and the place looks far too clean to be in actual use.

Then she spotted the bookstore, so we took a side-trip. It turns out that, regardless of its total absence on their web site, they do have a shelf for alumni, student, and faculty music. I'll go back during the week when there's a manager on site.

We also stopped at the museum to wander around the Rodin sculpture garden (always one of my favorites), and looked at the Quad and its centerpiece, the Memorial Church. It was locked -- I don't remember it ever being locked during my time on campus -- but the mosaics on the front are as gorgeous as ever, and you could get a glimpse of some of the stained glass through the window on the front doors.

Did I mention the Golden Bough concert last night? I thought not.

Computer geekery a post or two upwhen.

08:39 pm - Holiday season: eating and shopping

First the food. Last night was the $work holiday party, at a restaurant called Lavanda in Palo Alto. The open bar (Sarticious gin -- score) and hors d'oevres (wonderful olives, assorted dry sausages) were good, though served at the bar where they blocked the entryway and didn't give people enough room to circulate and converse. Good conversations, though. The flower_cat and I were at the LJ table: roanf, mr_kurt, saffronrose, finagler, fairyshaman, and only I think three people not on LJ. Service was slow, though, and the dinner only good rather than as good as one would have expected from the restaurant's reputation. The loud and soulless lounge lizard providing the "entertainment" didn't help.

Today, though, was much better. We'd gone to the Stanford shopping center only to find that our favorite restaurant, Bravo Fono, had vanished without a trace. Grump. We bounced around between various of our other choices (closed on Sunday) and streets that once had plenty of good restaurants and now held nothing particularly appetizing, and ended up at a place Colleen had passed a couple of times (across from one of her favorite fabric stores) and found intriguing, with a mix of Persian, Italian and "American" cuisine: Arya, 19930 Stevens Creek Blvd. in Cupertino. (Be prepared for an all-flash site with background music: I never said their website was great.) The food, on the other hand...

They have a weekday lunch menu, but it was Sunday. So we had the "Mediterranean Platter" off the appetizer menu (fabulous dolmeh stuffed with lentils, hummus, borani "bademjoon"), the "Arya Salad" (greens, a couple of roasted bell peppers, pine nuts), the koobideh plate (chicken and beef, with basmati rice). Desert was a Persian ice cream with a hint of rose and pistachio. Made of delicious win.

The other parties in the restaurant (this is 2pm on Sunday, remember) appeared to be mostly families. Many of them appeared to be familiar to the staff -- repeat customers are always a good sign. We'll be joining them.

Current Mood: content

11:20 pm - I should probably go to bed

... but not before at least briefly mentioning what I did today. Went for a half-hour stroll by the creek -- not much exercise, but a nice morning, all muffled in fog and comfortably cool.

We had bagels and Scottish salmon for brunch, then headed up to San Francisco for the Lamplighters gala. This year they only had one performance, and they combined it with an auction. Too rich for my wallet, unfortunately, but a lot of fun as a spectator sport. They worked the live auction part (mostly it was a silent auction out in the lobby) cleverly into the end of the first act.

I should mention at this point (for those just tuning in) that the Lamplighters are world-class Gilbert and Sullivan (and other light opera) company; the annual Gala is a parody fundraiser. This year's title was "Harry Patter and the Willing Suspension of Disbelief - A Series of Unfortunate Musical Numbers". To make a long and extremely funny tale much too short, the auction was woven into the plot to raise money to renew the 1500-year lease on the Hogwash School of Witchery and Wizardcraft, in order to prevent it from being turned into a big box retail establishment called Vol*De*Mart... You get the idea.

It was around 7:30 by the time it was done, so we skipped the usual champagne reception and headed over to the Cliff House for a somewhat expensive but very tasty dinner. The kids were happy -- they serve mostly seafood.

Now that the flower_cat's fish allergy (if it ever really existed and wasn't just a coincidental flareup of her Crohn's disease) has subsided, we're getting more fish for dinner. This is a Good Thing.

I wasn't particularly sleepy coming home, but whether this can be ascribed to my new facehugger or to the stimulant=-based decongestant and the four cups of coffee I had with dinner is, as usual, an open question.

But I think I ought to go fall over now.

Current Mood: tired

11:37 pm - A nice evening out

Went out for dinner at Buck's, followed by a BroceliandeBroceliande concert at St. Bede's in Menlo Park. About a five-minute walk from where I work, in other words. We took chipuni along -- he had taken the chaoswolf out to lunch and had never heard them.

It was a good concert. The church had fantastic acoustics, and looked striking as well. The walls were paneled in dark-stained marine plywood (I could tell because that's the only kind of plywood that comes in 13-foot panels.) The ceiling was an equilateral pyramid. As I said, striking.

Had a good talk with Kristoph at the reception afterward, mostly about recording and editing software, and gave him and Margaret a copy of CC&S. I've taken voice lessons from 'Stoph, and he's provided a great deal of encouragement and advice over the years. (By the way, CD Baby has it in stock -- just follow the link.)

01:18 pm - Walking to Safeway

(Cross-posted to healthy_fen.)

Today's walk takes us down scenic Sand Hill Road at the leisurely pace of about three mph. After an interlude in Rivendell Safeway, during which provisions in the form of yogurt and beef jerky were obtained, we return on the slightly more strenuous Sharon Park Drive. The return trip is mostly uphill.

Stats: time: 1:04; avg: 110; max: 139.

Walking on flat ground at my old pace of 3mph gets my heart somewhere in the 100-110 bpm range. I can walk for hours at that pace as long as I stop every hour or so to take my shoes off and let my feet cool down. Otherwise I get blisters. Which I'm close to, right now.

10:19 pm - Sunday evening wrap-up

After my walk and a little lunch, the flower_cat and I went out for a drive. Turned around earlier than usual because I was feeling sleepy; we both collapsed on the bed when we got home.

Neither the kids nor I had managed to get our bedrooms picked up, so I didn't have to pay up, but we went out for sushi anyway on the excuse that the Y.D. was getting A's in three or four of her classes. Worked for me; the Cat was in no shape to cook dinner, though she felt a lot better this morning than she had for the last few days. We're guessing it was a combination of an arthritis flare-up and some flu-like virus.

The Cat was annoyed because none of her favorites -- oysters, soft-shell crab, octopus -- turned up on the boats, and she couldn't attract anyone's attention to order some. For some reason it never occurred to her to ask the assertive teenager next to her to intercede, in spite of the fact that the Y.D. was, as usual, the only one ordering. I'd have told her, but as usual didn't realize how upset she was getting. I'm afraid I'm not very perceptive about what people are thinking.

In spite of not finishing the job in the bedroom, I did get a little picking-up done in both the office and the bedroom, plus about half an hour filing 2007 receipts. Recycled some years-old magazines that I was unlikely ever to so much as glance at, and a sizeable stack of blank paper and empty notebooks from years ago. I can use the shelf space for other things, thanks.

Only minor progress dealing with the clutter in my file server. This week, hopefully, I'll get a little more accomplished in that direction.

06:06 pm - Equinox weekend wrap-up

The flower_cat wanted to go for a drive this afternoon, so I took my walk at about 10am around the Rose Garden. Always a nice walk; the only thing I don't like is that it's dead flat.

We left for our drive at about 12:45; our usual "all-afternoon drive" goes up Leigh Avenue to Blossom Hill, jogs over to CA Highway 9 in Los Gatos, North on Highway 1 along the coast. We often take 92 in Half Moon Bay and cut over to I-280; this time we went further up 1 past Pacifica to where it joins Skyline Blvd, and went South to 280 from there. In all, about 150 miles and four hours.

Dinner involves corn from the produce stand we always stop at, a few miles South of Half Moon Bay. The Cat is now making scalloped potatoes, using the potatoes from our Organic Express shipment, left-over cheese sauce from the fridge, and left-over ham from the freezer.

10:58 pm - Ticket to ride

Have my airplane ticket for OVFF - it's a one-stop on American, having decided I didn't want to take my chances with USAir. Gets me in at 9pm on Thursday the 25th, but I'll have enough time in Dallas to grab some dinner. Paid for with Wells Fargo bonus points.

Managed to squeeze in a 2-mile walk at lunchtime. I'm still feeling a little dubious about my health, and didn't want to push it. I'll do my walking in the neighborhood over the weekend, thanks.

Some fascinating things coming up at work, which of course I can't talk about yet.

The flower_cat noticed "endless shrimp" on Red Lobster's menu this week -- or was it this month? Anyway, we went, though neither she nor the Younger Daughter actually called for refills. So RL wins this round. (I just had grilled snapper, since I can only get fish at restaurants these days, and the chaoswolf had shrimp-and-lobster linguini.

11:29 pm - Geekery and a great dinner out

Woke up at about 5am to find that my marvelous flower_cat had been up before me and made some peach custard. We both went back to sleep. The custard was delicious.

Went out for a pleasant five-mile walk this morning. After that, I drove over to REI and bought a new pair of hiking boots, because a comment by quadrivium a couple of posts downwhen made me look at the soles of the old ones -- they were practically worn through. The new ones are the same type (Keen Brooklyn) but half a size bigger -- 11 rather than 10.5. (My current walking shoes are size 11, too. It seems one's feet never stop growing; I was a size 9.5 30 years ago.) So these should be a bit more comfortable in addition to not being on the verge of falling apart.

About 5pm the flower_cat and I went out on our dinner date. We'd been going past the Forbes Mill Steakhouse in Los Gatos for years, looking at their menu, and thinking we ought to try it some time. Some time was tonight, and a fine time it was. We started out with Sarticious gin (from just over the mountains in Santa Cruz), which we had never tried. Both of us loved it: smooth, slightly fruity. Yum. Shortly after that they brought the bread (made on the premises, I'd guess) and the apetizers we'd ordered off today's specials: figs stuffed with goat cheese and wrapped in prosciutto, and oysters on the half-shell. There were three figs and three each of two kinds of oysters; we split the odd fig and divvied the oysters by proximity: one of the far ones and two of the close ones.

For the main course we just had more appetizers: the beef carpaccio, day boat sea scallops (two big scallops on a bed of black "forbidden rice"), and the filet tips (with cognac peppercorn sauce, scallions, and garlic chips). All made of yum. I personally thought the figs were the best.

We finished off with a cheese plate, cappuccino for the Cat, and espresso for me. Total was a little over a C-note before tip: high, but not outrageous as long as we don't do it more than every couple of months. We've paid more taking the family out for sushi, and enjoyed it less.

06:56 pm - Did I mention that the Starport is open?

Yeah, well... Grand Central Starport is open today and tomorrow for anyone in the area who wants to borrow some coolth and a fast net connection.

After a nice 5-mile walk (yay! finally!) and a light lunch, I set out to the dangerously seductive Southern Lumber for shelving and a couple of tools. We'd gotten Elfa shelf standards and brackets yesterday, but not the necessary 4-ft 1x8's. And I know there's a level in the house, but I couldn't find it, and the level in my ancient and cheap combination square was rattling loose in its housing and effectively worthless. Picked up a couple of paintbrushes, too, after determining that I did have Varathane Diamond Finish.

... And some sandpaper for the ancient Black&Decker electric sander, which died after about three shelves. Out of ten. Turned up a hand sander, and carried on: I knocked off the corners with a block plane, and chaoswolf finished off with the sander. Power tools are useful, but hand tools are more satisfying.

I set up five plastic lawn chairs in lieu of sawhorses. Varathane Diamond is a fast-drying, water-based finish; in 95-degree weather it was dry to the touch on the first board by the time I finished with the fifth. Two coats on both sides of five shelves by the time the Wolfling was finishing up the sanding on the last one. We'll do the rest tomorrow; I was wiped.

Had some of the flower_cat's yummy sangria and finished installing the Wolfling's shelf standards.

Went over to lisa_marli's party for a couple of hours, and to deliver pre-order disks to her and capplor, who I knew would be there because she'd (they'd?) stopped by to ask for directions while I was outside finishing. I still owe Robin a disk -- I didn't pack enough to cover her freebies. Sold one numbered set (can't rightly call them per-order sets anymore).

Now I'm back home, munching salami-and-cheese and finishing up another glass of sangria. Happy Bear.

09:22 am - Hello to yesterday's tomorrow

Yesterday's schedule turned out to be a little too tight. By the time I'd finished with my doctor's appointment (my shoulder problem appears to be tendinitis in the biceps tendon; I also gave him a signed copy of CC&S) and the associated pharmacy visit (prescription-strength naproxin and a change of statins from lovastatin to simvastatin) I had to fly low to have any chance of getting to my group meeting at 10am. Figured I'd go to the post office at lunchtime, but forgot to factor in the fact that we were having our Service Awards Lunch.

Lunch was delicious -- Il Fornaio in Palo Alto. I had salad, salmon, and tiramisu for desert. I also got my 15-year service award, which came with a lovely (and very heavy) stainless-steel-cased clock from Tiffany & Co. Do you have any idea how many engraved clocks and pen-and-pencil sets one accumulates in 30-odd years at a small number of jobs?

Never did make it to the Post Awful, because my OpenMoko phone arrived mere minutes before lunch, and by the time I looked up from playing with it, it was after 6pm. Still definitely a work in progress -- I'm not even sure it's a phone at this point. Nice little linux box, though, with a VGA display, USB, and BlueTooth. Twice the pixels of an iPhone at half the price, and unlocked as well. Sweet. The consumer version, due in October (which may be optimistic) will have Wi-Fi and accelerometers.

I will get to the Post Awful today. In about 15 minutes. Really. (Most pre-orders will nevertheless have to wait until after ConChord to get mailed. We're driving down tomorrow.)

10:19 pm - Well fed and slightly boggled

Went out with the flower_cat for a delightful dinner at California Cafe in Los Gatos Old Town. Cups of gazpacho, a plate of baked brie (with apricot jam and a bulb of roasted garlic), and the Fruits de Mer platter for two (lobster tail, oysters, shrimp cocktail [with dry ice smoking under the bowl], and snow crab legs. Finished up with a cheese platter and café mocha for desert. (Actually, the Cat had the "Marvelous Mocha", which was alcoholic and yummy. But since I'd already had a Guinness with dinner...

I'd brought home the rest of the CDs mere minutes before we left for dinner, so we came home to a pile of boxes with a street price retail value of $15K. Mind-boggling.

(The Y.D. is still out for burger-and-a-movie, by the way, which is why the Cat and I were able to go out for dinner at a comparatively elegant restaurant that the kid wouldn't have been happy at.)

10:54 am - In other news

My left shoulder is much better today; it tightened up almost immediately after I got out of bed, but it still doesn't seem as bad as it was yesterday. Not clear whether sleeping on my right side or an extra hour or so of drugged stupor sleep is what did the trick, but I'm not complaining.

The flower_cat and I tried a new restaurant last night: a "Mediterranean" place called Shish Kebab, in Los Gatos. Small, friendly, family-run; very tasty. Specializing in lamb. Not clear exactly what nationality but possibly Turkish, since they had Turkish coffee on the menu. (The last place we tried in Los Gatos, Transylvania, seems to have disappeared. Pity.)

08:55 pm - That's better!

A good dinner (halibut, Dead Guy ale, and a glass of Dalwhinnie in lieu of desert), a bit of a walk, enough water... My feet are still a little annoyed at me, but at least I'm not dragging around like a wet noodle.

I may have gotten a bit dehydrated this afternoon. Ya think?

Plus, before dinner, a reassuring call from my flower_cat. I'll be home with my Cat and my little girl tomorrow afternoon, and finishing up the artwork with artbeco sometime on Sunday.

Things are a little lonely here in Portland without cflute, who was here the last two times I was up here, but...

The bear will be OK. A business trip is all very well, but I miss my snuggles.

Current Mood: content

10:03 pm - Wiped out

Normally, a mere four-mile walk plus an afternoon of shopping does not tire me out to the point where I'm practically falling asleep before dinner. It seems to have done so today; possibly because I didn't get quite enough sleep last night. The Wolfling was up early, for once.

The flower_cat made some excellent soup for dinner, and some pesto that was supposed to have been a garnish for it. I had some on pasta instead -- yum.

It's only 10pm. If I go to bed now I'll be awake at 4am. Blink.

11:20 pm - Slightly Fried Bear

Before going out for my walk I cooked up suitable license boilerplate and applied it to the programs and makefile templates in my tools directory, in preparation for burning it onto about a hundred CD-ROMs starting tomorrow. Spent the last hour or so debugging the scripts that process my song lyrics -- I'll have to do some editing tomorrow to put the copyright notices in the right format. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

After my walk (4 miles by Los Gatos Creek) I went to Office Max and scored 200 slimline jewel cases in a 2-for-one sale, which made them a mere $0.15 each. Came home and created the glabels templates for the single-page inserts, composed the labels, and printed a couple of test copies. It turns out that the Memorex and Avery blanks are somewhat different in their spacing (and totally different in their layout if you want to do tray cards), but I now have templates for both.

The Gnome label-maker, glabels, is a major win.

After the flower_cat and chaoswolf got back from their seemingly-interminable Baycon meeting we went out for Chinese at Jasmine in Los Gatos -- it's been one of our favorites for at least 25 years. Discovered that selkit has a copy of Adobe Illustrator with him, so I'll bribe commission him to do the layout for CC&S. After Baycon.

I've moved over to Trantor, the new workstation, almost completely at this point. It's still running in 32-bit mode, but it's more than fast enough for what I'm doing, so I'm not going to worry about it for a while.

09:02 am - Hooray, hooray, the First of May!

<cross-posted to="healthy_fen">

But in spite of the fact that yesterday was sufficiently summer-like, today is starting out cold. I expect it to warm up, though. We've already switched our thermostat over to "cool".

Walked about three miles yesterday, down Sand Hill Road to the Safeway where I get most of my lunches for the week. I went for "healthy" this time, loading up on the baked snap-pea crisps that I liked last week, plus a block of firm tofu (which lasts me for two days) and a small bottle of soy sauce. In the past I've often gotten a package of pepperoni, which also lasts two days -- and costs twice as much for three or four times the calories.

</cross-posted>

( <geekery /> )

10:19 pm - A good day

... though not extremely productive. Went up to San Francisco to see the Lamplighters production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel. Oddly enough, even the Younger Daughter wanted to come along. I think the kids were expecting something funny, though; the chaoswolf in particular was a bit depressed by it. I hadn't seen it, or I might have warned them what to expect -- they don't seem to like surprises much.

I found it excellent -- the Lamplighters were up to their usual standards, even in a "staged concert". I rather like the format -- there's all the acting, singing, and dancing (their new choreographer is excellent) -- but with only minimal sets, and the orchestra in the back of the stage where you can see them for a change. Unfortunately for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, the season is over. We'll be buying the next batch of season tickets shortly.

Afterwards we had dinner at the Elephant Bar. Good variety of the "Asian fusion" sort. My dinner was 20% off because I now qualify for a senior discount, which I found somewhat appalling. Not appalling enough for me not to take advantage of it, however.

No work to speak of on the album, no walk, and no hacking, though I did finally get around to moving the backup drive into another room (which has a faster computer than my current almost-thin-client desktop, capable of doing the backups in half an hour instead of nearly two). A good day nevertheless. Need more family time.

12:03 pm - Gadget gluttony

(I'd say "gadget lust", but that's clearly not the appropriate sin for this one...)

USB Food Hub is the Best Thing We've Seen All Week - Gizmodo

Solid Alliance is no stranger to weird USB gadgets, but this USB FoodHub is the best thing they've ever done. By far.

( Image behind cut. The delectable horror of it all! )

If you take a close look, you'll see that the rice is a 4-port USB 2.0 hub, and the four other things (pudding, chicken, and two bits of seafood) are USB sticks. Together, they form something so awesome that the USDA changed its name to the United States Department of Awesome just to regulate the import and export of it.

08:26 pm - Friday the Thirteenth, part 2

Went to work around 11:15, which meant that I got there in time to have yummy shrimp won-ton soup at our little deli. I try not to eat there more than once or twice a week.

Went out for a 2-mile walk, feeling at a rather low energy level. I'm wondering: I had a Flexeril last night -- it's a muscle relaxant, and my back's been hurting for the last couple of days. But it's also a CNS depressant, and I have a history of reacting, um, inconsistently to depressants. Could that have had something to do with my depression this morning?

Work on my car was done around 3:30, so about 4:30 I headed out to pick it up. Ended up costing over a grand -- about twice what I had been expecting -- even with help from the extended warranty. Good thing I got paid today.

Picked up gin at BevMo, and rat-sized glue traps at Home Depot. The gin is now in the fridge, and the traps upstairs in the garage attic.

Got home and found catsittingstill's homebrew CD, I Promised Eli, waiting for me. Combined with quadrivium's CD, Courting My Muse, which arrived Wednesday, there's been a certain amount of fanboy squeeing in the house. (Cat's CD is being published by samizdat, by the way -- I got my copy on the condition that I'd burn more copies as needed. The track list, btw., is here. If you're not local to me, Cat can probably point you at somebody closer.)

Now I'm going to try to ignore the siren song of my new DSL line and its makeshift gateway, and try to get some editing done.

12:17 am - And cabbages, and kings

Which is to say that a great many chores and to-do list tasks got done this afternoon and evening, but very little actual work. No more recording, for example.

But I did, finally, go through the Pile of Stuff to the Left of the Keyboard. tPoSttLotK is where I tend to toss paperwork and such that doesn't have to be handled immediately, but looks as though it's going to need attention in the next month or so. What this often means is that stuff gets ignored until it's no longer relevant, but in this case I found a couple of health-related receipts that I'd been looking for for a couple of weeks. And a great deal of clutter has been eliminated, though there's still a small pile of things that will need attention soon.

Going back in time to the start of the afternoon, I found out that my car is waiting for some parts -- it'll be ready tomorrow. The front struts and bushings will get fixed under warranty; flushing and replacing the transmission fluid, power-steering fluid, and coolant will cost me.

Tried to set rat traps in the garage attic, and failed miserably, nearly getting a finger broken for my trouble. I'll go get glue traps on the way home tomorrow.

Went out for dinner with the flower_cat. We wanted to try someplace new, so of course the kids wanted to stay home and have something familiar. OK with us -- we went to Los Gatos to try Transilvania, a Romanian place we'd been eyeing for months. It is to yum!

We split an appetizer of grilled portabello mushrooms with marinara sauce and melted blue cheese, and a glass of a heavy, dark red wine whose name I unfortunately failed to catch. Then I had the sarmale (ground beef, pork, and rice rolled in pickled cabbage leaves, served with polenta, pickled cabbage, and sour cream on the side), and Colleen had the bulsz (polenta layered and baked with romano and mozarella cheese and served with a dollop of sour cream on top). Finished off splitting a serving of savarina -- sponge cake soaked with syrup and rum, with whipped cream and cherry preserve.

After dinner I got DNS going on the interim gateway (took all of 10 minutes), followed by the aforementioned clutter reduction.

And now it's time for bed. Past time.

10:46 pm - Busy day, but not the way I wanted it

Spent most of the morning at Ikea with the chaoswolf shopping for shelving and a desk chair for her room. Meanwhile, Stanley Steamer came in and steam-cleaned the carpets in her room, super_star_girl's room, the upstairs hallway, and the stairs. I then spent the entire blasted afternoon with the Wolfling putting her bed together. Made some absolutely stupid mistakes putting the shelf together: I was pretty punchy at that point and shouldn't have been allowed near a screwdriver. One screw -- fortunately not a perticularly critical one -- is missing; I think it's the one I dropped when handed the wrong one at a critical moment. Another of the same sort fell into a crack from which it will take a magnet to retrieve it. The desk will have to wait until morning.

There are some things about Ikea's design that are very clever, and others that are absolutely infuriating.

Of course, come 4:00pm the flower_cat was absolutely furious at me for not having gone shopping with the Y.D., who needed a new mattress for her bed. Sorry, Love, there's only one of me, and two peoples' worth of work to be done. Luckily the Cat was able to get the mattress after I assured her there was enough headroom left on her credit card, and that I had allowed for the weekend's expenses in the budget. Yummy chili for dinner, which means leftover chili for breakfast tomorrow. Yay!

Nothing done on the album, obviously, but I did manage to download all the preorder details from PayPal, which is something I've been putting off for some reason. 39 web preorders total. Add the 23 paper preorders already entered, and 10 more since Consonance, and we get a grand total of 72 (not allowing for a couple of 2-set orders, a couple of contributor and promotional copies, and the two Interfilk auction packages). There are plenty of pre-order packages left, folks!

Tomorrow I get to take the Y.D. desk shopping, finish helping the Wolfling put her bed together, and hopefully have enough time and energy left over for some tracks. And start the taxes. Did I mention that I still haven't started the taxes? At least things are organized. I could do it in a weekend at this point, if I had a weekend free.

08:57 pm - Homing from work

Went in to work today mainly for two reasons: to make sure my tech reports got printed on time (mr_kurt took care of that, along with the rest of the group's -- thank you), and to attend a talk that turned out to be almost content-free. So after a delightful birthday lunch with the flower_cat at Cafe Bombay (an old favorite that we hadn't been back to since it moved about a year ago), a short walk, and about an hour's worth of email I decided to take the rest of the day off.

I'd been planning to take some time off this week anyway. So instead of working from home I found myself homing from work, taking advantage of a T1 line and a fast computer to have a careful look at Oasis' graphics templates. The Gimp is happy to import both PDF and Photoshop files, so it was easy to get the information I needed off the templates, but there aren't any open-source equivalents for the layout software they want me to use. I'll probably end up borrowing a machine at work, if I can find anyone there with Pagemaker or Illustrator.

Finished off the work day with a bit of Linux evangelism (posted both here in LJ and in my work blog) and looking over finagler's slides for Thursday's patent review committee meeting -- I'm a co-inventer.

08:09 pm - Checking in

(mostly cross-posted to healthy_fen)

I walked half an hour yesterday -- call it a mile and a half. Eating healthily on Wednesdays is always something of a challenge, since it's our open house night and there's always pizza as well as bread, cheese, and sometimes fruit. Fortunately, I'm not all that fond of pizza these days, and there were apples and blue cheese. We won't mention the hot chicken wings.

Today I'd scheduled a belated Valentine's Day lunch with the flower_cat, so it was looking as though a walk would be unlikely, except that I crossed paths with one of my coworkers, finagler. Brad, like me, likes to walk while he's thinking, and he was working on a presentation about the project we're both working on. (Cool stuff, but I can't say much until the patent is filed, at the earliest.) We put in about 2 miles walking round and round the building (it's about 1/3 mile).

We had lunch today at Chef Chu's in Los Altos; it was already a fixture in the area when I arrived as a grad student in '69, and was my introduction to Szechuan Chinese food. It was one of two favorites of the Stanford AI Lab crowd, the other being Hsi Nan in Palo Alto. The Cat and I spent a lot of time in both restaurants while we were courting, so a Valentine's lunch at Chef Chu's was perfectly appropriate.

Dinner today was stir-fried pork and sugar-snap peas, with an apple and blue cheese for desert.

08:51 pm - So, did you get any exercise today, Bear?

Didn't manage to walk today -- one of my coworkers came into my office just before lunch with an interesting (in the Chinese curse sense) upgrade problem, and we spent the rest of the day working on it. But I have been good about parking at the far end of the parking lot, and eating mostly dried fruit for lunch.

The problem was, in fact, pretty interesting: we have a pair of Linux tablet computers that we bought a couple of years ago. They came from Element Computing, which is no longer in business, and shipped with a customized version of Xandros on them which is now hopelessly out of date.

So the challenge is to upgrade them to something useful. Like Debian Etch. Mine had already had a copy of Testing installed in another partition, back when Testing was Sarge. Like a fool, I just chroot'ed in, did a dist-upgrade and waited for the smoke. Having played this game before I had sense enough to install a new kernel as well. Amazingly enough, it mostly worked. I had to drop back into the vesa display driver -- via didn't recognize the chipset correctly. And I still don't have the touchscreen working -- it's apparently a Fujitsu, but there are some oddities about the serial connection that I haven't figured out yet.

Kim wasn't so lucky -- he'd left his install pretty much alone, so he only had one partition. We tar'ed off the entire thing (about 3GB) for backup, and set about seeing whether one could dist-upgrade a Xandros system to Etch. Apparently not. So we tried to go back.

That was a mistake, because after tar'ing the original contents back we neglected to reinstall lilo. Too used to having things easy with grub, I guess. So when we tried to reboot, lilo emitted a couple of lines of gibberish and then hung. So tomorrow I bring in a USB CDROM drive -- the stupid tablet doesn't have a built-in drive. Makes it a lot lighter, but it's hell when you're trying to do an upgrade.

(Originally intended for healthy_fen; edited so it makes sense in my LJ.)

12:45 pm - Grand Central Starport: status report

OK, 13 charity checks written so far, about 25 more to go. But the mailman has already come, so if I get the rest to the post office by sometime tomorrow afternoon I'll be happy.

Party in progress -- we have a tub full of iced drinks and a table covered with cheese, olives, bread, and smoked turkey. The ham's in the oven.

03:44 pm - Merry Christmas, and a Happy...

... Newton's Birthday, as well!

I woke up a little after 6am, having foolishly neglected to disable my alarm. The flower_cat woke as well, so we snuggled for an hour before she went back to sleep and I got up to take my drugs and make coffee. super_star_girl came down a little before 8am and woke the Cat, and chaoswolf came down about half hour later, at which point we opened prezzies. I got a case of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale, three cans of Stilton and port wine soup, and a huge quantity of very dark chocolate. I'm always good for edibles and drinkables, and it saves the trouble of figuring out where to store them.

The family got a copy of Universe from "The East Coast Clan" -- asavitzk and family. All I can say is "Wow!" It's impressive -- huge, gorgeous, and as informative as it is beautiful. I'm hoping that the kids like it as much as Colleen and I do. We've left it out in the living room for guests -- if I or Colleen starts reading it we'll end up being unsociable all af