Air Travel and Punctuation

X-mas will soon be upon us and Kat and I are looking forward to visiting Canada. We've booked two weeks worth of time, which should be enough for visiting everyone and having enough 'down time' that it doesn't feel like constant running around.

I'm looking forward to being in Canada, but not looking forward to getting there. Air travel has become annoying, insulting and uncomfortable. I spent a good hour during Thanksgiving trying to understand why just about every American I talk to has no problem being treated like a criminal for attempting to get on a plane. Nude scans and intimate pat downs get a collective shrug from everybody. This is a country where the license plate in New Hampshire state have "Live Free or Die" as a motto. I'm starting to think they should be "Embrace Fear". Rather than bore people with my dislike of the new security rules I'm working on condensing it all down to a couple of bullet points so I can sum things up in 30 seconds or less. That way I waste less time ;)

Now I'm getting old I can fondly recall the day when air travel was considered classy and you used to get free wing badges, tours of the cockpit and free playing cards. Now children get intimate pat-downs from the TSA.

Kathleen's documentation for her massage certification finally arrived, yay! She took the documentation in to her workplace only to be told that she had been transferred to another location. Happily it is closer to home and has more athletic clientele. On her first six hour shift she did four massages and is back at work again today, probably going to do four more. She took a epsom salt bath last night to deal with the sore muscles. Sore muscles aside she really enjoyed the first day at work. Making people feel better, and getting paid for it, is a great way to spend the day.

During a particular stressful period at work last week (on a conference call trouble shooting one thing while carrying on two IM conversations dealing with other issues) I received an email from a co-worker with some serious punctuation abuse. I've learned to understand (not accept) that people under a certain age feel the need for punctuation, grammar and spelling in communication are far less important than brevity and the urge to follow memes. I figured work emails should be a bastion of normality. The offending email carried a question as to when we thought an application would be ready, the sentence was followed by not two, not three, but four question marks. As I stewed in righteous indignation trying to think of a properly business-like but snarky comment I was distracted by yet another IM, which was good.

When I finally got back to responding to the email I realized that we've moved in to an era of grammatical anarchy. Grammar, like the Catholic church, should change with the times. The Catholic church has decided that condoms have their value so why can't I roll with the times and accept free flowing punctuation? So here are some rules I came up with in regards to question marks:

• One question mark: interrogative.
• Two question marks: surprised interrogative.
• Three question marks: jaw dropping, OMG surprised interrogative.
• Four question marks: heart-stopping, panicked, shocked interrogative, as in "Is that Jesus stealing my car????"

Work based emails do not require quad question marks. Ever. Okay, if the CEO of your company decides that being payed 107 times the average worker is acceptable and was going to decrease his pay to that amount *then* you can use four question marks. For your information 107 times an average worker is what CEOs made back in 1990, now it is way higher.

I went to the REI 'returned and already opened' sale this morning. I told myself it was to look for good deals on X-mas gifts, but really it was just to see what fun stuff I could buy myself. The REI staff had tags on all the goods with the reasons why they were returned, it made for very amusing reading. Some of my favourites:
- Didn't like the way it was damaged after I fell.
- After only months of use it started pilling.
- Wore where seatbelt rubbed against it.
I wandered around amused at how petty people were, chuckling at the returned items. I then wandered over to the electronic area looking at high definition recorders (sporadically stops recording), GPS watches (didn't give good location information) and waterproof watches (the band was frayed). I figured I could get a good deal, REI was a respectable place and people were overly fussy. I noticed a GPS on sale (turns off randomly, hangs, battery life very bad) that had 'works fine' written on the tag. I recognized the GPS as the one I had returned months ago. All of a sudden all those petty return comments seemed not so funny. I didn't buy anything.

Of Plumbing and Self Abuse

Before you jump to conclusions, hear me out. Over the last couple of weeks I've found myself doing a lot of plumbing. This hasn't been a conscious decision, truthfully I just can't see myself waking up and thinking "today is a good day to replace faucets!", but as is often the case, it comes about of necessity. Over the six years of our residency here, every bathroom drain had become sluggish. Drain cleaning liquids didn't work and it got to the point where having a shower in the upstairs bathroom resulted in water pooling up to one's ankles.

Kathleen had some trepidation about me tackling the issue as I don't have a proven track record of fixing things. Nonetheless, I was determined. I'll spare you the gory details, but cleaning out six years of buildup was really gross. Ugh, I'm suffering flashbacks right now. The upside was that two summers of my youth spent working for a pool company gave me enough knowledge to pull pipes apart and put them back together again. Plus it only cost five dollars worth of tools, so I consider it a job well done.

A week later our kitchen faucet became harder and harder to turn off and eventually culminated in a bubbling spring welling out of the base of the tap.  As our kitchen counters flooded and water spilled over the floor, I - deliberately calm - walked all over the house trying to figure out how to turn the water off. This isn't something I'd contemplated before, so there was a lot of gazing in to corners of the garage and poking my head in to the back of closets. With the help of the the guy painting the house next door I managed to turn off the water to the entire condo (all four units) . I went back inside to inform Kat of my victory; she wasn't impressed and pointed out the two taps under the sink that she had used to stop the flow to the sink. I kindly went outside and let the rest of the condo have their water back, I don't think anybody noticed.

With the water turned off, and Kat trying to finish making biscuits for dinner, I disassembled the tap and cleaned it of accumulated crap (I'm getting good at that it seems). All the gaskets looked fine so I couldn't see why it had decided to let all the water through. As is standard in this world, things come apart far more easily then they go back together. Off I went to the Internet to find how to put the tap back together. Here is a little note for people who are thinking of uploading videos to YouTube regarding fixing taps: videotaping your hand pointing at the tap while you talk about how you fixed it is useless. I don't care how excitedly you gesticulate at the tap, if you don't take it apart and put it back together on video, it makes me question whether you ever successfully completed the task in the first place.

I got it back together using basic reasoning, and it works just like new. Kat was duly impressed. Whether she was impressed by me fixing it, or by me not making it worse I'm unsure, I'll assume the best. Oh yes, I changed the oil in my motorcycle this weekend as well, I'm going to be ruining my soft IT hands if this keeps up.

I pride myself on treating my body well and keeping in shape. I listen to my body, which is why I don't smoke (I can feel the smoke settle in my lungs, yuck), I didn't gain weight when I stopped being a bicycle courier (if the body isn't hungry, don't eat just out of habit) and no longer get hiccups (I figured out how to relax diaphragm and stop it from spasming). This makes it all the more frustrating when my body insists on a guerilla campaign against me. It waits until I am not in conscious control of my body before taking over and trying to kill me. Okay, that is a little over the top, it isn't trying to kill me, more like maim and cripple me.

It started with the snoring. Other than ruining a good nights sleep and annoying Kat it isn't that bad. It is frustrating that I can't seem to do anything about it.

Then, about ten years ago, my brain decided that a full set of teeth is conducive to good health so they had to go. I started to grind my teeth while asleep. This led to wearing down and chipping my teeth as well as throwing my jaw out of alignment from too much clenching and causing nasty headaches in the morning. I am now on my third night guard, or my 'chew toy' as I like to call it. I chewed through one of them, which obviously inspired the dog because he pulled my second off the nightstand and chewed it to pieces. From the looks of my third I'm soon due for another. The dentist loves this problem. I don't.

Having stymied my brain's attempt to make me eat only soft food, the brain is fighting back by attempting to cripple me. Kat has informed me that I now have the habit, while asleep of course, of flexing my feet constantly. Kat thinks this is at least part of the reason I suffer very tight calf muscles and sore achilles, and I agree that it makes a sad sort of sense. Now every morning I limp out of bed feeling like I just climbed 50 flights of stairs.

Kathleen's massage teachers think the foot flexing is a way for the body to rid itself of excess stress, which is what I also heard about the teeth grinding. There has to be a better way of getting rid of stress that doesn't include making me a toothless cripple. I'm still trying to figure out how to avoid this destructive behaviour, perhaps I'll have to get a treadmill and run myself to exhaustion every night. Of course since the behaviour is done at night how do I keep track of whether the grinding/flexing is decreasing? I don't think Kathleen is willing to stay up all night to monitor the situation for science or love. It's a conundrum.

I just checked my phone and it looks like Kat has finished giving a massage so it is safe for me to head home. Ooh, look, Stephen Thaddam (friend of some other Phillip Dean whose email I apparently share)  is online. I never did get back to him about whether "Explain the role of Guru Gobind Singh in founding the Khalsa community, and the importance of the five K’s for its members?" was a good entrance question.

Cats! Fish! Marriage!

After much contemplation we have decided that our cat is good at all the things bad about felines, and bad at all the things good. She wins in the "I'm ignoring you" and "Do what I say" and sucks at such things as grace and being able to control her claws. You would figure after 14 years with claws she would have figured them out.

A fellow on my soccer team was kind enough to bring back some Ahi from his fishing tour and share it with the team. When he said he was going to bring some fish I wasn't expecting the sheer size and amount of Ahi steaks he was going to provide. I grabbed a large frozen fillet from him after the game and figured Kat would make something lovely out of it.

Which reminds me, Kat has been watching an awful lot of the Food Network lately. It's the default channel now when the television is turned on. I can see the appeal of the shows like Iron Chef, the chefs have to be quick thinkers and have a vast knowledge of how to prepare things. Sadly there are the standard reality shows that make you shake your head in despair. Cupcake Wars being one of them. I watched five minutes of it and couldn't stand it any more.

So there was no surprise after I came back from the game, showered, had a bite to eat and sat down on the couch, that Kat was watching the food network. It wasn't until someone on the show pulled out a large steak that I remembered I had fish sitting in my bag, in the garage, in with my soccer stuff. Happily it was still mostly frozen and the next day Kat made it in to some *very* good pistachio encrusted seared Ahi. Yum!

My project is moving forward. Now that it has stopped being theoretical and we've started doing coding a lot of people have stepped up to demand that it integrate with their systems. Those would be systems we hadn't been told about when we did the initial requirements definition. I'm also getting people trying to put new capabilities in to our system that don't fit, such as them wanting our system to automatically create documentation for them. That's got nothing to with what our system is supposed to do so I'm saying a lot of "That is a great idea! No, we won't do it.". Well, I'm more politically correct than that.

My friend Todd and I got our asses out of bed Friday morning to head down to the beach again. I had read the waves were going to be small (1 - 3 feet) so I brought the surfboard in hopes of using it. By the time I arrived Todd was standing on the shore in shorts and a T-shirt, shivering. He announced that it was far too cold to go in, plus it had rained the last couple of days and the bacteria count would be up, plus there was nobody else in the water, and wasn't that strange?
My standard battle between Ocean=Good, Cold Water=Bad turned in to a rout and we didn't go in. Kind of sad how quickly I gave up.

One of my co-workers is going back to India over the X-mas break to get married. I believe it is the standard arranged marriage, since it isn't like he has spent a lot of time in India to meet women. He also isn't very excited about it, it is his duty and he's going to do it. We were talking about it before a meeting and I guess it'll be a large wedding, since they invariably are in India (if you can afford it). The father of the bride is paying.

I joked that the only reason to have a large wedding is for the money, and did they give money in India for weddings? With feedback from the other three Indian ex-pats in the room I found out that not only do you give money at the wedding, you give it to a person whose job is to collect it and keep track of who gave how much. Turns out you track that because if you're invited to their wedding in the future you are expected to give an equal amount to them.

I bet some smart coder in India has already found a way to write an app that plugs in to the social network applications to keep track of these things. They could also integrate with online payments and act as wedding-payment brokers with easy to print out lists and online reminders ... they could even 'hold' the money before the wedding and make interest off it or provide micro-loans if you haven't the funds to give a lot, but expect to invite them to your upcoming wedding and bet they'll give you more than you gave them. Hmm, I'd better take out patent on that.

Evil Cat Strikes Again

Phillip was the first to notice that our fridge was not as cold as usual. In fact, it was getting downright balmy. This was driven home when, a few days later, he got a nice big mouthful of sour milk with his morning cereal. He was kind enough to warn me not to risk the cream in my coffee as he left for work. I felt loved.

So, I dug up our warranty and discovered, naturally, that it had expired almost exactly a year ago. After calling Sears and rolling my eyes at the minimum $250 visit (the fridge only cost $600 when we moved in), I called a local company and booked a visit. When all was said and done, it turned out that the condenser / fan had failed because it was clogged with our dear cat's Evil Tumbleweeds of Death. Add this to the recent spate of vet bills and medications and the Ice Princess has cost us over $2000. We've considered a "catch and release" scenario at the zoo.... I wonder if anyone would notice the new addition to "Cat Canyon"?

Another thing about the fridge that has always been a bit of an issue is the fact that the water dispenser is located inside and pouring a glass of water involves standing there with the door open. That, and it drips on the butter. Who designed this?! When Nikki and Mario were visiting, they resorted to buying bottled water because they found San Diego's highly chlorinated water - even that which came from the filtered fridge dispenser, both unpleasant to taste and hard on the stomach. I have noticed a funky smell as well. Altogether, this led to the purchase of a Big Ass Brita (aka "UltraMax!"). It does a very good job of making the water taste softer and saves energy since we just keep it on the counter - I prefer room temperature water anyway. Appliance adventures, whee!

Amidst the hassle of cleaning all of the bad food out of the fridge, we were readying for the event of the season. Our good friends Kristina and Kevin, who have been together for about eight years, got married in September. We enjoyed ourselves very much - particularly impressed by the Star Wars theme song played by a Scottish piper. The location was great; the rooftop terrace of an otherwise quaint B&B called "Cardiff by the Sea Lodge" was the perfect setting for the intimate ceremony. Cardiff by the Sea (the town) is located only thirty-five minutes north of San Diego and is a typical little SoCal spot with an enviable stretch of coastline. From the terrace of the B&B, we had a spectacular view of the Pacific, and after the sun set, there was a cozy little nook with an outdoor fire-pit. We ended the night at a luxe restaurant down the road with an outdoor patio literally steps from the crashing waves. Very nice.

Back at home a few days later, I had my Eureka moment. Yes, I've graduated my Massage Therapy program, but it really sank in the moment I sent off my certification packet. Phillip came home to a very giddy and happy wife. We ate out, and my grad prezzie is awesome: a new MacBook Pro! I promised not to spill coffee on this one. Now I will be sitting on pins and needles, sprucing up my resume for job-hunting, while starting the study process for the National Exam Certification. If California certification was a sprint, the National Exam is a marathon. I'll keep you posted.

Phillip's moment for drama came a few days after that.  Of course it involved soccer. This time he returned sporting a very obvious goose-egg on the side of his noggin, just above his ear, and the promise of a black eye. Both injuries were due to the same guy! ("At least it was a guy this time!" he interjects with ruffled feathers...) First, they were just being clumsy and ran into each other head-first while trying to track the flying ball, and secondly, the guy was wearing a ring and was flailing his arms so that Phillip got a sudden back-hand to the face. Nice cut, but happily, no serious damage. He's healing quickly! ("Just in time for the next game." he adds dryly...) I don't get the appeal. I really don't.

This weekend has been semi-busy. I spent a good part of Friday cleaning and organizing the house for my graduation party, which at that point, was starting to feel like an obligation. Phillip had to work late, which was a bummer, but thankfully, ordering in a boatload of Indian food and reminding myself to just relax made it all better and we ended up having a great time. I love the sound of happy, chatting people filling the house, and the bonus was that we achieved a small, but important revenge on Scuttle, who spent the whole time hiding on the balcony.

- K.M.

Copyright this.

I really should stop reading articles about copyright protection, it always make my blood boil.

Kat wanted to buy the Sims 3 while we were in Best Buy but I recalled the company that puts it out was responsible for putting some pretty nasty root kits on customers machines to 'protect' their game from pirating. So in the process of installing a game that you have *bought the rights to* they install software on your machine that you don't ask for, don't know about, and controls how many times you can install the game. I'm looking at you SecuROM.

Kat and I had a tense moment where she wanted the game, but I refused to buy/install it on my laptop if it came with SecuROM. Happily having a Internet enabled smart phone allowed me to make some quick searches and find out that the Sims3 does not have that execrable piece of software, so we bought it. Oddly enough even though the Sims3 doesn't have that rootkit I've still lost access to my machine, Kat won't give it back to me.

Ooh, while we are on that subject the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills department in the U.K. seems to think that the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should pay 25% of the costs of warning users that they may be fined for downloading copyrighted material. As somebody on the slashdot forums put it:

Would you penalize those that build highways for giving road racers the smooth and long pavement on which to drive recklessly? It's not their fault that people choose to break the law (or in this case, violate copyright).

As somebody else on slashdot pointed out, the people are responsible for funding the vast majority of the U.S. government:

2009 Income Taxes

Individual: $915.3B

Corporate: $138.2B

Expand that + sign beside Income Taxes, yet it is the corporations that have the most influence on the laws due to lobbyists.

Grr.

Kat and Nikki outside Coronado

On a positive note, Nikki and Mario had a good visit. We took all kinds of pictures, played Wii, visited and saw dolphins. I also discovered the iDVD application that comes with any Mac so I created a DVD of all the pictures and videos that will play on a normal DVD player connected to a television. Pretty cool. Of course televisions have a lousy resolution so most of the pictures don't look fabulous, but at least you can watch them on the television.

Hey Mario, the helicopter misses you.

We also discovered that we could have gone for a romantic long weekend at the hotel Coronado's "Beach Village" for a measly $25,000, scroll all the way down to the bottom. We walked by those places while we were wandering around, I didn't realize the people in there had so much damn money. Heh, I like how the $25,000 option has small print that says "Taxes and $25 daily resort charge not included.". Oh come on, if I just coughed up $25,000 for four days I'd be pissed that they would tack on another $25 dollar charge per day *after*. I'm rich, pander to me! And exactly what is "bath butler service in your cottage."? That sounds sordid. Oh wait, I'm rich .... pander to me!

Kathleen had her last day of classes on Friday, so now she has graduated from Mueller College. Woo Kat! Of course now comes the State exams, the national exams, and all the paperwork. Boo paperwork!

I'm keeping busy a with new project that highlights the schizophrenic ways of large corporations. The VPs claim that the project is of utmost importance on one hand while cutting funding to key people who deliver items to my project with the other hand. I don't understand the myopic views of large corporations, but then again I don't work in the rarified environment of upper management. The worker bees are continuing to do "more with less" and at the same time we've managed to build a museum celebrating the companies history. Uh-huh.

Things Break, and Get Fixed.

Let's get this out of the way first, I bought new glasses. I was vacillating between Italian skinny suit wearer and 50s scientist. I decided to go with the 50s scientist look. Now I have to beef up my wardrobe to match the glasses. Guess I'll be wearing lab coats from now on.

It's been a time of breaking and fixing. This week we had horribly long hours at work due to system upgrades that broke in unforeseen ways. I won't go in to details because nobody wants to hear about messy IT details. Suffice it to say that my boss's boss's boss's boss (yes we have that much hierarchy and more) wanted updates all the time. It wasn't any systems I was responsible for that broke, but we were the ones suffering the side effects. The only good outcome is that my name gets more notice higher up the pay grades as the person who 'takes care of things', this will help when the Portland move has to get approval by food chain.

This was also a week where other things were fixed. My motorcycle finally got fixed from the accident I had over two months ago. This means I'm finally finished with the annoying "Your lamp is not working!" warning that by moto has been telling me about for months. Also my shifter is now fixed and I'm no longer cutting holes in my boots. This means I get to use my new boots, woo! Sadly I think they messed up my clutch settings along the way :(

Next week is going to be exciting, Mario and Nicki are landing Friday to stay for a week and a half. Nicki has been here before so I'm sure it's all ho-hum for her, but Mario has never been to San Diego. Actually I don't think Mario has been much further than Quebec, Ontario and Vermont so this should be pretty cool. The only thing we need to figure out is how to get a hold of a vehicle that seats four, that or we travel via Smart car and motorcycle all the time. I think we'll work on the rental car idea.

Kat and I dodged a bullet last night. We were give free tickets to a harbour cruise by friends of ours, they won the tickets and couldn't go. We dressed up in white, which was required, and headed downtown for the evening. We quickly realized one of the reasons we don't go downtown very often is the dearth of parking. We ended up parking somewhere that was questionable, but was better than spending another 20 minutes looking for approved parking.

• Then we realized the line to embark was huge.
• Then we spent an hour in line waiting (poor Kat was in heels).
• Then we got on and it was a 'booze cruise'.
• Then we noticed there was nowhere to sit that wasn't already taken.
• Then we realized once the boat left there was no getting off for three hours.

Three hours of being stuck on a boat with a bunch of drunk people, loud music and no chairs=get the hell off the boat. We had a nice supper in a new Italian restaurant in Mission Hills instead. Yes we are getting old, but happily Kat and I are still simpatico in regards to what we think is entertaining.

Our friend Amanda who first introduced us to Portland (we went there to visit her) has continued to send us pro-Portland information in the mail, which we appreciate. The latest tidbit from Portland that we read, and resonates with the way we feel, is the '20 minute neighborhood':

A 20-minute neighborhood is a place with convenient, safe, and pedestrian-oriented access to the places people need to go to and the services people use nearly every day: transit, shopping, quality food, school, parks, and social activities, that is near and adjacent to housing. In other words, a 20-minute neighborhood is another name for a walkable environment.

Links to more detail here (PDF file) and here (blog entry). I believe I've had conversations regarding exactly those ideas with my mother, since we both like the urban environments, also, almost all the places Kat and I have lived meet those criteria. Without giving it a nice sound-bite name we've been living that idea for ages. More reasons to love Portland :)

Designers and bankers, sometimes both lack a connection to reality

It's been a mixed week. We got a notice from the IRS regarding out 2008 taxes, turns out our accountant messed up and we owe another $500. Our cat decided to urinate on the couch again. I think my motorcycle helmet is the causing me acne like a 16yr old and I just spent 1/2 hr deciding on new glasses just to find out the place doesn't take my insurance. Oh yes, the kitty has now racked up over $1,000 in vet bills.

On the plus side I had a good mountain bike ride on Wednesday and a good road ride back from work yesterday and Kat and I had a really nice supper Thursday night, and it was free. I think overall it's been a positive week.

On the ride back from work on Friday a random driver rolled down their window and declared "Croatia!". I happened to be wearing the 2002 Croatian world cup jersey for a biking shirt. She is only the third person ever to recognize the jersey. Sadly my Nigerian jersey has never been recognized by anybody and *that* one stands out.

I forgot to mention that the insurance company got back to me with my check for the damage to the motorcycle. They actually sent me a cheque for more money than the BMW shop quoted the repairs for, which is pretty shocking considering the quote. I think their approach is to give you more money than you asked for and then hope they never hear from you again. Fair enough. I've replaced the pants and boots and I'm waiting for all the parts to come in so they can fix the rest of the motorcycle. It'll be nice to be able to shift in a normal manner again rather than having to hook the sole of my boot under a sharp piece of metal, which is what I have to do now. I didn't realize it until last week, but I'm wearing a hole in the thick leather of my boots by shifting like that.

not my picture

As some of you may know, Kat and I appreciate designer things. A well thought out, good quality item is (in my mind) well worth the extra cash you have to cough up for it. Our Cameleon couch is one thing that falls in to that category. We also subscribe to Dwell magazine because we like to look at how people use small spaces and 'green' design for houses. I find that only 5% of design appeals to me, mostly I just don't agree with peoples design esthetic which is fine because that is the joy of artistic things, you can differ in opinion. Some times though I think that designers seem to forget about reality and get caught up in their own heads. A recent list of chairs in Dwell pointed out this as a 'designer' chair (follow link or look to the right). Oh please, what the hell is that? It's ugly, unfinished and boring. I don't care if the wood is cured using a unique mixture of yak and panda piss and it hum lullabies to you when you sit in it. It's ugly, unfinished and boring. Somebody take that designer outside and slap him around with a reality stick.

It reminds me of a conversation I once had with a designer/artist who was telling me about his coffee table he designed that had grass under the glass top of the table.

me - Interesting, how do you handle the drainage?
him - What?
me - You're going to have to water the grass, so how do you handle the water drainage?
him - looks confused, then adopts the long suffering look of an a miss-understood artist dealing with a Philistine

The conversation dried up after that. Actually, that conversation was with an ex-girlfriend's boyfriend so there were all kinds of extra layers of uncomfortable.

On a lighter note I just got back from the bike shop where I had to get my rear wheel trued on my road bike. There were two cute ladies working at the shop and both of them getting dirty and fixing bikes, how hot is that?

Of Bread and Portland

Green Dragon Brew Pub

We're back from Portland; loved it there again. We had a lovely time visiting Amanda and Ryan, they put us up in their spare bedroom and acted as tour guides to all the cool, hip places around their neighborhood. Portland has a lot of cool and hip places: sustainable sushi, brew pubs, movie theatres that let you buy and drink beer, mass transit that goes out to the airport. It's a great place to be.

The weather was bright and sunny, in contrast to San Diego, which was overcast while we were gone. Good timing on our part. Kat has been judiciously keeping to her new exercise regime (and I've been joining when possible) so while we were in Portland we took long walks and Kat and Amanda did yoga.

We liked the area where Ryan and Amanda live, with the old Victorian style housing, communities and an organic blend of residential and commercial. We also visited Ryan's cousin's place, which is a renovated condo downtown with huge, floor-to-ceiling glass windows that span one entire side of the living area. Very nice as well. Seems Portland has it all.  ;)

There was a lot of "when are we moving here?" questions being asked. We are looking in to it. I'd love to work remotely, there are a few of my co-workers who do that.  They fly in a week every month or two for meetings that have to be done face-to-face. I could live with that. Cheaper living conditions, flights to rack up frequent flier points, working from home, what is not to love? Of course working from home may drive me nuts due to lack of interaction with other people. I know I can be efficient working at home, I do it occasionally now, but not sure what would happen if I worked from home for weeks on end: Kat would come home from a hard day wanting to relax and I'd be  "WE MUST GO OUT!".

Update since I wrote this: I spoke with my boss about working remotely and he thinks we may be able to work it out. I guess that is one benefit about being employed by a flexible large company

My department has moved buildings, so now we are in a nicer one. Not the top of the line building that some other, more important, groups are in, but better than we had. I get the feeling IT is at the butt end of list when it comes to making employees comfortable. After all, we aren't really revenue generating, we're nothing but an expense. Since we are no longer near a place for acceptable coffee I moved the espresso maker Kat bought a while back in to my office but I have still to work out where everything goes. This week I realized that I'd stored my lunch food, coffee and my towel in the same drawer. My towel smelled of coffee and banana. It wasn't bad, just disconcerting.

Kat made bread last week, it was very successful. She picked up a book that has a different way of making bread. Rather than mix, pulverize, recover, pulverize, ignore, pulverize, it includes a lot of waiting. I'll let Kat describe it better since - (This is Kat, I'm taking over this post...)

The book is "My Bread" by Jim Lahey, and the technique he describes is not really "new". In fact, it's very old. The concept of letting a very moist dough rise for up to 24 hours before baking it inside a cast iron pot in the oven, dates from the Roman era. I highly recommend the book and the technique. It's summer now of course, which means I'm not keen to bake a lot right now, but I'm eager to try a cinnamon-raisin recipe next. Okay, I'll hand this back to Phillip.....

... The results were lovely, good crisp crust and tasty spongy interior. The crust was very crisp, so crisp that I didn't realize I'd sliced up the roof of my mouth and tongue until I took a sip of wine. Ouch. (Kat again....)  He exaggerates. It was excellent bread. Especially for my first try! (/ end Kat)

One of the many reasons I love Kat is because she is a grounded, down to earth kind of person. She is taking 'Spa Techniques' in school right now and is covering such things as wraps and hot stone. Body wraps sounded vaguely interesting until Kat told me that it essentially immobilizes you and then they leave you for 20 min. I'm suddenly no longer interested. She was saying that the job of the massage therapist is to sit there and pay attention to the client for the 20 minutes that they are immobilized (which makes sense, what happens if sneeze then fall off the table?). In class people were channeling energy with dance and tracing glyphs over the wrapped person ... um, okay. I think I'd prefer the person to check facebook rather than tracing some bizarre glyphs over me while I'm stuck there.

Her hot stone class was talking about how the massage therapist should choose stones that 'speak' to them. If I told people that I was connecting with stones and that they were speaking to me they'd assume I'd fallen off my bike and taken a head wound. Kat figured she'd find stones that were a good weight and were nice and smooth. See why I love her?

We've booked our flights back home, so we will be sending emails to people letting them know when we will be back in town. I'm excited about re-purposing my grass cutting boots back in to the winter boots they were originally made to be :)

Hills n' Valleys

Where did June go? I swear it was just here. I'm sure everyone has felt this way at some point, and recently things got a bit crazy here. For one, my school semester was particularly challenging, secondly, I've been cast as Banquo in Macbeth and finally, there was some pet drama here in the form of Scuttle.

My last class of the semester was on Thursday and boy am I relieved it's over! Deep Tissue and Trigger Point Therapy, while useful as a modality for treating chronic muscle tension, is a bitch to cram into your brain in a few short months. The final exam had a written and practical portion, and let me tell you, being in a hot room (81 degrees F) with twelve other students - all of them really nervous - is no way to spend your morning. The exam was like this: while waiting your turn with the professor, you work on whatever muscles your partner asks for. When your turn comes around, you choose a slip of paper from a bag, on which is written one of potentially twenty-odd muscles that you had to study. I chose supraspinitus, a relatively easy one, because it is small, specific and has only two trigger points. As per the routine, I explained the location and attachments, the action, where the trigger points are, then the referral pattern for pain. After this, I was asked to demonstrate my technique for working the muscle and finally how to "set" it. I lost points because I blanked on the referral pattern, (it's down the radial side of the arm), but passed with a 93%. I was mostly just happy that it was over and done. When my partner switched places with me, he got vastus medialis and kinda froze. I felt bad for him, but the prof gave him a second chance. He scraped by with an 80%. (The pass/ fail mark is 75%). Even worse, when I got dressed again, my bra was wet from how much I'd sweat during my test. Yuck.

Banquo is an honourable character from the famed Scottish play, and yes, a man. I'm interested in how the director plans to address my approach to the role, which is to not address gender at all. My first rehearsal was supposed to be on Sunday, from noon till 6pm, but a handful of actors flaked out when they belatedly realized that it was Father's Day. This marks the first bump in what will be a very long road. The director and dramaturge, by the way, are planning an ELEVEN MONTH process of analysis and rehearsal. I'm still not sure why I agreed to this, except perhaps for a sort of morbid fascination. I'll keep you posted.

And then there was Scuttle. As some of you may have noted in previous posts, she's gotten skinny and unpredictable. It's been a very gradual change, and there was concern mixed with rationalization that it was a natural part of aging for our fourteen year old ice princess. About two months ago, she peed on our couch (the expensive one of course), which is totally out of character for her. Then she peed on the ottoman. One day after I'd spent hours with a rented steam cleaner on the furniture, she peed on the ottoman again. Then the other couch. Twice. Obviously, something was wrong.

Given my schedule and relative stress level, I decided to wait until classes finished to take her to the vet while Phillip and I both adapted to this upsetting new routine by keeping everything off-limits and/ or covered in plastic sheeting. We spent more money on cleaning products and kept a close eye on her. On the last day of classes, I took her to our vet and she was kept overnight for extensive tests after learning that she'd went from nine pounds to only six. That's a lot for a little cat. The vet was also concerned about a mass in her abdomen.

The dreaded phone call was to tell us that she was very dehydrated and constipated - which explained the mass in her belly, and that she might have a tumor. I authorized treatment and another test and we waited. When I was called to pick her up the next day, she was in rough shape from an enema and the resulting mess. They had washed her, but she messes in the cat carrier out of nervousness, so I had to wash her again at home. Nightmare!

Diagnosis: hyperthyroidism. The vet has given us pills and an appointment in three weeks to check her T4 hormone level (which was extremely high) and her kidneys. The drugs should stabilize her metabolism, so she'll stop eating so much but gain back some weight. There are potential side effects, of course, but the medication is common enough and inexpensive, so she may safely be able to take it for the rest of her life to manage the condition. Poor old lady. Hopefully, this will calm down her strange behaviour, but we're not taking chances. We'll be the youngest couple on the block to have plasticized our furniture like old biddies. Maybe I should buy a candy dish and peppermints to set out for guests too.

All in all, relief is the emotion of the day. Scuttle is recovering - though I think she got a bit of a strain in her hind legs from struggling against so much handling - and I'm embracing some free time to help Phillip with a bit of yard work and of course to write. I've stopped playing Warcraft since school got so busy and I'm disinclined to return to the time-wasting. I have regular clients wanting massage every week and two more classes to complete before I will be certified. I hope the excitement is done for the year, I've had about as much as I care for.

Hey you kids! Get off my Internet!

Kat and I have some disagreements about technology. She's an artist and a student of the human body, I work in IT. You can see where this is leading, right? Yup, she's an early adopter and I generally dislike technology until you can prove to me that it is better. Happily for me, Kathleen puts up with my Luddite ways; she recently wanted to buy some music by Lamb, and rather than buy it from iTunes (which is what she would normally do) she humoured me and ordered the CD from Amazon instead.

Kathleen loves iTunes. She has bought episodes of Family Guy, Chuck and a few movies. I generally dislike iTunes, I can't explain how much I hate the fact that iTunes tries to restrict what I can do with the media that we legally bought. Cartoons to the rescue! (Also, click on the image above to see a clearer version of my point.)

Kat would sit on the couch and laugh while watching episodes of Chuck so I figured that I wouldn't mind watching them. She bought them on iTunes and downloaded them to her computer so I can't just say "Give me your laptop, I want to watch the shows you bought.". I'd rather watch the shows on the projector in the living room. She also has been running out of space on her machine due to the amount of data she has on it.

Let's pretend that we owned the shows on DVD, how hard would that be? Hmmm ... I'd pick up the DVD case, go in to the living room, put it in the Mini and watch the show. That's easy!

Now let's deal with iTunes.

- We'll just export the shows from iTunes on to some fast media like an external drive and import it to the Mini! Nope.

- We'll just burn it to a DVD! Nope.

- We'll sync it to the iPod and then sync it to the Mini? Nope. The mini will insist on wiping the iPod if it is going to look at it.

Argh!

Yay! iTunes has allowed home sharing. Time to go read some FAQs on how to use it. It works! I copy over the Charlie's Angels movies (it takes all night). A couple nights later I go back to continue the job, I can see her iTunes library on the network ... but it won't let me copy the contents this time. WTF? Two days later I've uncovered the issue and start to copy the T.V. episodes over via the wireless network. So. Very. Slow. Wireless network issues and bandwidth raise their ugly heads days and days later I have the first season of Chuck copied over *whew*, it's been two weeks of on and off suffering for one season of Chuck. I haven't bothered to copy over the other files yet. So painful.

Kat also likes her Kindle (which we've written about before). There are many things about the Kindle that are good, but let me explain what *isn't* good about it. While Kat was in Ottawa a while back she bought a book by Ian C. Esslemont. She went to go read it when she realized she had bought the second book in the series. By the time she gets home she realizes no worries, I'll just buy the first book on my Kindle, woo for new technology! She reads the first book on the Kindle then the second paper copy. 

Let's pretend we own the paper copy. I get it off the shelf and start to read it.

Instead I grab the Kindle (how exciting, new technology!). Wait .. Kat wants the Kindle back because she is reading the Twilight series. So when can I get the Kindle to read the book that she isn't using? Soon? Kinda soon? Maybe? (Note from Kat: Pft. I'm a speed reader. It took me very little time to finish the Twilight series, you big baby.)

We bought a paper copy of the book. I can see why publishers like those things. Could we give the copy of the book to a friend? No. Can we sell it to a used bookstore? No. Did it cost any less? Not really. (Yes it did.)

That is enough of that.

I'm back playing soccer again, which is good fun. During the first game, however, another guy on the team messed up his knee and now we are a guy short again. Dangerous fun.

I've discovered a new web comic, I think it has been around for quite some time but I have only just started going through the backlog. Odd, math-based sense of humour. Very entertaining.

We're back from vacation. A really short one. We rented a cottage up in Idyllwild for the memorial day long weekend. There were two things I was worried about regarding the trip:
1) How the Smart car would handle the hills
2) How the dog would handle the trip and odd surroundings

I'm happy to say they both passed with flying colours. The dog settled down pretty quickly and was really good in the new place. It had bad 70's shag carpeting and he enjoyed his four paw traction. I made use of the 'flappy paddle gear box' as the guys on Top Gear like to call it. That made the annoying shift choices of the car a thing of the past and it took the hills with no problem.

The fact that the windy route caused me to drive up the hill like a go-cart was both fun and amusing, since it sent the dog tumbling on every tight corner. I take my amusement where I can find it.

Like many places that have wilderness and are still close to L.A., it was touristy. We went for a few small hikes but ran in to a lot of people. There wasn't a lot of hiking done because the urban dog was overheated and tired quickly. We found a good local coffee shop (important) where I was outed as a Canadian, I have to stop saying the word 'out'. Of course the coffee person had been to Canada and loved it up there (Victoria and Whistler). Who doesn't love Canada?

Sadly I didn't manage to get far enough away from cell towers so work found me on Friday night and I spent a couple hours trying to trouble shoot issues over the phone. Unpleasant.

The cottage was nice, the back porch was really, really nice. We spent a lot of time on the back porch reading (in my case) and doing yoga (in Kat's case). The dappled sunlight, the quiet and the fresh air. Sigh. There was a small parcel of land at the end of the street for sale that Kat and I spent time building our dream home on (that is the view on the right). You can tell from the two photos how much the dog appreciated my 'Lord of this domain' pose. I thought about putting a mouse-over in there but became bored quickly and gave up on it.

The whole 'Dream House' discussion brought up some question about how exactly does one go about achieving a dream home? I've always been a big fan of paying for things in cash, which obviously you cannot do with something as big as a dream.
Do people save up lots of money just in case the dream home shows up?
Do people buy the dream home after the standard one and hope like hell they don't lose their jobs?
Do people sell everything and live in limbo while the dream home is being built?
How do you know your dream home is in the right place? What happens if your location turns out to be not-so-dreamy?
Buying a dream-home anywhere essentially ties you down to that area, and is that a good idea?

It's a tough thing to figure out. Kat posited that we need to look around a variety of areas to see if any particular place grabs our interest, I'm good with that idea. Idyllwild was nice, but I wouldn't give up things to live there. We are heading back to Portland next month, so we'll have a second look at that area. I've always believed I wanted a place in the desert with views of desolation, that would be very cool. Of course a couple days without a walk to a coffee shop may turn me in to a unhappy person. I also wanted a cool place in town as well. Am I unsure, or am I flexible?

I'm fine. Really, I am. Had a little accident on the motorcycle on the way home tonight. Turns out the protection gear works just like it is supposed to. Some rips in my pants, but otherwise it all came through with flying colours. The guy swerved in to me as I was coming up on his right while getting on to the highway. I took out his wing mirror, but I think there is way more damage to the bike. I just started the insurance process (Gieco was very nice) so we'll see if my normal hatred of insurance companies is going to be validated. My poor bike has some damage now :( I'm going to have to take some pliers to my shifter to get it to stick out like it is supposed to.

In more positive news, Kathleen has received two different accolades at school; the first is a letter of recognition from the school for volunteering with them at the Earth Day fair. The second award is for two semesters of achieving a 4.0 grade point average. Woot!

The Deadly Sins and You. How to Avoid Bad Things by Sinning.

Sloth has been my buddy for a while, it's one of my favourites. As people may know, I like beer. Beer=Yum. My lack of self control regarding consumption has always been balanced by my laziness. Many a time I've been sitting around and my mental process go something like this:

"Wow, I could really go for a beer/cookie/pie right now!"
"Hmm, I'd have get up / get dressed and go out to get it ... and it's blocks away."
"What is that friend Sloth? Yeah, you're right. I really don't want it that badly."

High-five to sloth. "You da sin baby!"

Unfortunately I have a corner store a block away, that is pretty close. They don't sell pies (thankfully!) but they do sell beer. The next bit is a bit geeky, you've been warned.

Back when I used to play Warcraft in a raiding guild the raids often started late and there were AFK (Away From Keyboard) times when we weren't doing anything. I started to drink beer while raiding. I attempted to use the beer drinking to motivate my fellow guild mates: the longer we wait the more beer I drink and a drunk healer means you die more often. That didn't seem to work. Then the bad moment arrived when I realized I could get to the corner store and back in the time it took for some people to go AFK and go to the bathroom.

My good buddy Sloth couldn't compete with that kind of access. Whenever I thought a beer would be nice I could get one. I often think a beer would be nice, you can all see this isn't good.

So with Sloth not pulling his weight, I've had to call upon Pride to step up. Beer=calories=belly. Pride seems to be holding up pretty well. Pride has staying power since it "... is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and indeed the ultimate source from which the others arise." Wikipedia.

Yes, yes, I know there is a theory that I could only drink one but I don't have that sort of self control. Put a bunch of cookies in the house and they're gone. What I like, I consume. Essentially, that's Pride battling against Gluttony. I'm sure that would make a great grudge match, oh wait .. they've come close to doing that already.

Greed also dropped by last weekend to help me. We've been meaning to stack our washer drier to save some space in the garage. We've been meaning to do it for around four years, Sloth and I were hanging; "We'll get to it eventually". We also wanted to put a wash tub out there as well. Kat called up a plumbing place to come in and give us a quote on stacking the washer/dryer and installing a wash tub. Since they didn't know how hard it would be to install the drain for wash tub they gave us a price range: $600 - $1,000. Stacking the washer/dryer was $250 of that. Greed and I decided that was a ludicrous price and we weren't going to pay it. A tape measure and a phone call to a friend later, it was stacked.

Envy and I have never gotten along very well. Yes I'd like more stuff, oh, wait, I don't want more stuff. Yes that guy has a nicer car than me ... hmm, don't care about that either. Every time I covet something I realize I could probably get it if I worked hard enough / lied enough / saved enough /stepped on enough people and I'm too damn lazy for that. Envy isn't really that great a motivator.

I would work with Wrath but he's so demanding. Get angry about this, pissed off about that, rant, yell, scream. It's exhausting.

So Sloth, even though you let me down on the beer front you are still my BSF (Best Sin Forever)! What's that? You saw me with Lust? We were just getting a coffee and talking. I swear!

On a completely unrelated note I saw a Delorean on the way home from work today. Caught a brief look at the back end while I was accelerating into traffic and glanced back to see the hood. That is all you really need to recognize one. A quick search to get the right spelling and it turns out they are still selling them!

Things Change.

Kat and I've have dropped cable for a new entertainment provider, we've moved to satellite, Direct T.V. to be precise. Should be cheaper for the first year, but come the second year it'll be the same price as we were paying. I've found the only way to get cheap prices from companies is to go through their contractual period, then threaten to leave. It's sad to think that what I'm being told by companies is that they love me as a payer, but not enough to give me the cheapest deal. Essentially you have to be the squeaky wheel, or they take you for granted. Two years from now I'll be dropping Direct T.V. for somebody else who is willing to give me a cheaper deal.

I watched my first soccer game in high definition (HD), it looks impressive. I sure hope the World Cup is in HD this summer.

As some of you know, I have had all kinds of issues with my iMac in terms of over heating. I am now the proud owner of a custom laptop for gaming purposes. It comes with Windows 7 and other fun stuff like a fingerprint reader and all kinds of extra hardware like 2GB of video RAM. I've found Windows 7 not as easy to understand as OS X for Mac, which is odd. Over 10 years of working with Windows and I'm still looking around trying to find information that I found in a shorter time as a new Mac user. Games sure look pretty though. Games look *really* pretty. I'm working my way through the PC games that I couldn't play for the last couple years.

Mass Effect=Very good.
Dragon Age, Origins=Very, very good.
Plants vs. Zombies=Hilarious and good.

Kat was making fun of me because I bought a big powerful gaming machine and I'm playing something downloaded from Popcap games (Plants vs. Zombies). It's fun.

Or cat decided to piss on the couch last week, a couple days later I find she's pissed on the ottoman as well. So now our living room smells like cat pee. That is one of the worst things. After a first application of Natures's Miracle the smell was still there and we were thinking we may have to replace the cushions. Of course our couch is made by some obscure manufacturer in Montreal and the store who sold it to us isn't around any more. I had a heck of time even finding it mentioned on the 'net.

A bucket of Nature's Miracle and a steam cleaner and the couch is happily back to being clean again. I like the couch, I don't want to replace it. The feline is sitting in the back room looking quite happy with herself about *something*. I hate that cat some times.

On a happy note I talked to my orthopedic surgeon on Monday and I'm cleared to get back to road riding and surfing. I'll be organizing Friday morning surfing at work, I've decided to try and invite as many people as possible. As much as I love being in the ocean in the morning, it is peaceful, I have issues getting up that early and in the cold water. The more people I invite the better chance I will get out of bed assuming somebody else will show up. Motivating myself is difficult, assuming that somebody else is showing up will motivate me enough.

I know everyone is wondering how my various email incarnations are doing around the world:
- The Irish me was enjoying going to the greyhound park to watch some races (booking from Shelbourne Park Greyhound Stadium)
- The Las Vegas me is heading off to Eddies wedding (I got their plane ticket reminder). Yay Eddie!

The police are breaking in to our cranky next door neighbor's house. Ah, the joys of the big city.
- Update One: They are now announcing to whomever is in the house that they are going to have to break the window to get in.
- Update Two: I think he's dead. The ambulance just showed up.
- Update Three: The words 'face down' were heard.
- Update Four: He's not dead.
- Update Five: The four police cars, fire truck and the ambulance (containing the cranky neighbor) have now left and all is quiet again.

To more mundane matters, my foot is getting much better. I no longer have to wander around wearing the franken-foot, and I can finally put away the collection of left-foot shoes I have spread around the house. One more doctor's appointment week after next then I think I'm done. Still not allowed to do any 'impact' things, but I've gone for a road ride and that felt good.

One thing this broken foot has proven to me; this is indeed a litigious society. When I was in the emergency ward being triaged they asked me my level of pain on a scale of 1 - 10 and I told them 'One'. As long as I was not standing on it, it was just a dull throb. When I saw the doctor in the Emergency he asked me again what my level of pain was, again I said 'One'.

When the nurse shows up to give me my marching orders he hands me a prescription for Percocet, which from what little I know, is a pretty heavy duty pain killer. I had to ask him how they managed to think I needed those after saying 'One' all the time and he said with a straight face "Pain is the number one cause of lawsuits.". Fair enough.

I just looked up Percocet online and read this: "Be careful if you drive or do anything that requires you to be awake and alert.". Anything that requires you to be awake and alert? That covers just about everything.

By the way, has anyone ever seen the 'face scale' of pain? How very bizarre, I'm sure it tests well, but who drew those? Wong, or Baker's children?

We had a little dose of Americana last night, and not the type you want to see. Kat and I stopped at the corner store to pick something up and as Kat was walking up to the door a fat kid jumped out of a minivan, finished stuffing something in to his mouth while running up to the door and screaming "Mom! Hurry up!" By the time the child turned around Kat was staring down at him with great distaste. It is probably not a good time for me to feel love for my wife as she is disdainfully staring at a child, but hey, sometimes you can't help the way you feel.

To top it off, Kat ended up in line behind the mother in the store. The two ladies working behind the counter were not white and according to Kat they really didn't look the same.

Clueless patron: "Are you two related?"
Employee One (sarcastically): "Yeah, we're sisters."
Employee Two (embarrassed): "We're from the same island, actually..."
Clueless: "Oh really? Like, what one? Samian? Samo-something?"
Employee One (still sarcastic) "Yeah, that's right. We're all related on the island."
Employee Two (too embarrassed to continue, serves Kat)
Clueless: "Oh wow, really?"
Kat: OH MY FUCKING GOD ARE YOU KIDDING ME? YOU CLUELESS DUMBASS!

No, not really. But that's what she wanted to say.

Kat is in the midst of her finals for this semester, stress levels have risen. I was helping her study by calling out pressure points like "Kidney 27!" and she had to point at it. I have no idea how she keeps all those points in her head, I'd be at an utter loss. She is getting interested in Acupuncture. I told her massage I will let her practise on me (I'm nice that way) but no way is she going to practice acupuncture on me. *shudder*

I'll leave you with this parking ability, I've heard rumours that this was possible, turns out it is. Then again, just because it is possible doesn't mean it's legal. I haven't checked. I was using my crutches to get around at the time so I had an excuse ready in case anybody asked me what I was doing. It was only for a short time, I was picking up a pizza. It also greatly amused the patrons of the pub across the street.

More random updates:
- the tree we planted in the front yard is sprouting leaves, yay!
- I took the crappy GPS back to REI (a year later) and they gave me a full refund on it! I love REI.

Doesn't it seem that the holidays either zip by too quickly or get stretched out until you find yourself blinking at sunspots while emerging from the end of the tunnel? We had a wonderful holiday; relaxing and quiet at home for December and then a nice long visit with Joan and Paul for January. Normally I wouldn't consider January a 'holiday', but having guests who bring 'happy hours' and stories of adventure and excuses to play outside seems close enough.

Speaking of playing outside, the weather has been alternating between grey, rainy days and brilliant sunny ones. Today is one of the latter, and I realize I appreciate it all the more for being a bit more rare lately. The rain has been good for the little ficus we transplanted; while rather anemic-looking, it nonetheless seems to be thriving after being thoroughly doused in a few days of hard rain, with intermittent sunny periods.

The last weekend of Joan and Paul's visit was cause for a send-off of extra-ordinary proportions, and as you may have read here, we chose to spend the night in Venice Beach, then visit the Getty Museum.  The little 'canal neighbourhood' of VB is very obviously a hot-spot of architectural exposition and is truly a delight to explore - especially since we rather chanced upon it unexpectedly. The Getty is yet another architect's dream made reality and we were fortunate to have a wonderfully clear day to admire both the building, grounds and the surroundings all the way out to the Pacific.

Our return home was bittersweet; we always enjoy the January visit and it's sad to say goodbye, but it felt nice to come home with Maverick and just curl up in the solitude. Scuttle looked terribly smug.

The peace was destined not to last, sadly. Monday night was the Sprouts final game of an unbeaten season. Phillip played twenty minutes before an awkward kick between him and another player resulted in a painful strike against the bottom of her cleats, with him hobbling off the field shortly after. He took a breather and prepared to come back onto the field, but the pain persisted and finally, he sat out the rest of the game.  The Sprouts went on to an undefeated season and will be promoted from 9b to 8b league. Huzzah! Phillip then walked (well, gimped really) the whole six blocks home and upon coming upstairs, declared his suspicion of a broken foot.

There was discussion about emergency room versus family doctor appointment the next day for x-rays, and after a shower, Phillip was in enough pain to choose the ER; however, after signing in with triage and being told the wait-time, he was ready to flee, hobbled or not. My good sense prevailed: "We're here now, might as well see it through rather than take a chance on our GP's unavailability."

The ER wait wasn't as bad as either of us feared, but it wasn't quick. I had my textbook with me so I could study for a pathology exam - the irony of which was not lost on me, surrounded as we were by the dross of humanity - but I ended up driving home after an hour or so. It's hard to concentrate when there is so much of your subject matter in the air, not to mention the blaring 'reality tv' show about dog-fighting. Ugh.

We'd arrived at the ER at 10 pm, and by midnight, Phillip called me to pick him up, foot heavily splinted and bound with bandages. The resident who examined his x-rays suggested it was not a serious break. Phillip had his appointment with the orthopedic surgeon today who confirmed that the hairline fracture of his fifth metatarsal (with some extension into the joint) is not enough to warrant a cast, but a special foot-brace will be required for a month. I had to stop empathizing with my beloved, because my own foot started to ache. Yet, I will continue to suffer! I have to share Zoomie the Smart Car and -gasp- mow the lawn!

All kidding aside, I'm glad Phillip gave into my pestering to work from home this week. He hobbles about when he can, but he won't be on the motorcycle anytime soon, if I continue to have my way. Amazing what a tiny crack in a tiny bone can do, huh? That said, be safe and healthy, my friends and loved ones.

-K