tychoish, now without a net

I haven’t posted very much about the kittens of late. I’d like to report that they’re doing well. A friend (incidentally, the person who taught me how to knit, lo those many years ago) visited the kittens a couple of weeks ago, and upon the conclusion of her visit she said “I look forward to hearing about their… career’s.” Frankly the thought of them having careers–particularly when I don’t really seem to–was a bit frightening.

Nevertheless the concept has stuck. So here is a report on the careers of Kip and Merlin:

Here’s a picture:

• This is from a period when they were lying together on my desk. Very cute. Note the ball winder in the background. Kip is in the foreground.
• They’ve taken to having rolling night time battles which occasionally interrupt my sleep as I become a substrate for these battles.
• Though they didn’t purr very much when they first came to us, now they’ll both purr pretty much any time you pick them up. I’m in favor of cats that purr.
• I’m starting to realize that my cat allergies are something that I need to pay a little more attention to managing, particularly given the long hard quality that these cats have. I think this will likely just turn into a more regular face and hand washing behavior.
  • Kip and Merlin have longer hair than other cats we’ve had in recent years, though, when I was a small child we had a Mainecoon-type cat who had longer hair than these boys. And lets be fair, one of our big cats has medium-length fur which is particularly silky and not staticy (which means that its airborne more than it should be.)
• Kip has developed a fondness for a ball which he caries around and growls adorably over.
• Merlin has discovered two things. One, he can pull the mag cord out of my computer with ease when I’m sitting at my desk with my computer on my lap. This is ok, because I have one of the mag cord on my new computer, but it’s annoying. The second thing that he’s discovered is that he shouldn’t unplug the computer. So he grabs and runs.
• The grown up cats are starting to come around to the new cats. Their initial response was fright (Nash) and Curiosity-Followed by viciousness (Montana). Nash is still afraid but less so, and has engaged aged in some parallel play, while Montana has had some more positive interactions. I think if we didn’t have concerns about keeping food separate for a while I think they’d be ok to be fully integrated at this point.
  • I should underscore that Nash is a huge 16 pound cat, and Montana is 10ish pounds. I think that element makes their reactions even more funny.
• Kip and Merlin both have very faint taby stripes in their gray sections. This is incredibly cute, and I’m not sure that it comes across in any of the pictures.
• Kip has taken to waking me up in the night by running on me (less bothersome than you’d think) and chewing on my ears (more bothersome than you’d think). The first night, it was my toes–not ears–at 4:30, and he has moved on to ears at like 2:30. Though he can usually be chided successfully, it’s more disruptive of my sleep schedule and overall functioning than I might like.

In summation: kittens are good. I approve. I’ll keep you all posted as their careers progress.

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tagged: journal • lists • observations

As part of the “putting things in order,” I’m doing some very rough budgeting and prioritizing of expenses and projects in my world. I’m looking for jobs and trying to figure out my needs and what not. Turns out this is hard stuff.

This is in part difficult because I’m a pretty frugal person, I’m low key, I get a lot of clothes second hand (there are some great local second hand shops). And when you think about knitting as an entertainment (which it is) the dollars to hours ratio is pretty good. Same with spinning, only potentially more so. Same with books and reading. And writing is, well free. And while I’m pretty up to date with what’s happening with technology, I have a 3+ year old computer, a 3 year old cell phone, a somewhat newer iPod (that I totally use constantly). Embarrassingly I don’t even have my own digital camera, and don’t seemed too inclined to get one, (I have a 20 year old film camera that I don’t use much though!) You get the picture.

As a sort of thought experiment, I made a list of “things I would buy if money were no object.” Not extravagances exactly, but all of the things that I’ve said in the last couple of years “you know it’d be nice if I had X.” I’m not going to list these things because that would be absurd, but it’s interesting to see what I listed. A surpassing number of things were I’d estimate 20 dollars or less, and at least 80% of the list were things that were 100 dollars or less. And most of these things are piddly like (a desk chair which is two inches taller–which I suspect doesn’t exist–and leans back a little, or a sippy-lid for a nalgene bottle.) These are things, that I mostly need to just drag myself to the store to get done–complicated only by the fact that I sort of hate shopping.

I think this would make me a lousy lottery winner. It’s really hard to spend a few million dollars on things under 100 dollars. Reminds me of Cory Doctorow’s story Other People’s Money (podcast here) a little.

I’ll write more about headphones in another post, but my writing headphones have been ill for the past six months or more. Their detatchable cord had been chewed by a certain long dog and while this didn’t ruin the cord, it did hasten it’s demise. As I said the cord was detachable, which lead me to believe that it was also replaceable. Unfortunately, the manufacturer used a non-standard attachment size–not the connector which was perfectly standard, but the end was a bit smaller than the generic cords.

So I had this very nice set of headphones, and no way to reliably plug them in, and I had given up on them, and had convinced myself to ask for them as a birthday gift (Next Monday). As I started to do some research looking for the right replacement pair I became confused and disgruntled (reading the musing of audiophiles often does this to me). So in frustration I was finally driven to take a blade to one of the ends of a mini-stereo cord. and… Lo and behold, I was able to make it fit without compromising function.

Ergo. Good as new headphones. In fact, better than new headphones, as the cord I have now is thicker and not broken and therefore more conductive, so the sound is noticeably better. I’m happy. On the downside I don’t have a clue what I want for my birthday now. Sigh.

I hope you’re having a good day. My presence here will be sporadic over the next several days, but I think I should be able to keep in touch.

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tagged: journal • observations

“Hey look at that!” he cried out, far too excited for the cereal aisle, if you asked me.

But no one ever did. “What.”

“They have cranberry chocolate cereal! And it has flax in it!” Again, too excited.

“Ew? That’s gross.”

“No we’re getting it, we have to!” There were already too many exclamation points in this conversation, but it wasn’t quite over. “It even has flax seed!”

“Still gross.”

“Still getting it.” He said, and placed it firmly in the cart.

“Whatever, I’m getting Cheerios,” I say. I put the palatable cereal in the cart, and pray that after thinking of the alternative for all of 3 minutes, that I’ll have an appetite for them by the next morning.

The next morning, we each have our own cereal.

The following morning, we both have Cheerios. No one is surprised.

Three days latter. There is most of a box of Cranberry Chocolate Cereal (with Flax Seed!) in the pantry. There is one bowl’s worth of Cheerios left.

I think we can all see where this is going.

And I don’t need to explain why I had graham crackers for breakfast.

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tagged: observations • writing

So I’m writing a book where many of the characters are basically CIA agents. Which has meant that I have needed to spend some time thinking more seriously about intelligence and counterintelligence operations.

Then, an event in my real life inspired the following realization/observation:

If you’re gathering intelligence and you discover something you don’t like, because you’re spying, you can’t really be upset when you unearth this information.

Scouts honor, or something.

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tagged: interwebs • observations • writing

So, yesterday at the mall, we stopped in the Tevana store. Because you know, I’m a tea drinker, and it seemed like the place to go.

It’s a cool store, as these kinds of obnoxious commercially “oriental” things are. And I made a purchase, sort of on a whim, of tea things. I also made a few observations about myself and my caffeine habit.

The most important thing is that I’m not a terribly sophisticated tea drinker. I’m never going to keep a thermometer on my kettle so that I can make sure to steep the tea in water that’s 195 degrees. I am never (on this blog or elsewhere) debate the various merits of drinking tea steeped at 195 or 175 degrees (F). I’m also never going to rinse tea leaves.

I also want dark hearty tea, and I’m not particularly interested in rich or interesting flavors, or a diverse tea selection to match my mood.

But I’d like to be able to make loose leaf tea. In part because of economy, in part because it’s easier to make blends and control the strength of the tea.

So I got a little tea brewer thing from this sore, which is brilliance. In November we got an Aeropress, for the coffee drinker in the family, and it was brilliant. I sort of feel like this tea maker thing, is brilliant, only more my speed.

Anyway. End Geek. I have to work today, and we’re having a friend over to spin this evening, which is pretty cool. But it means I have a lot of not tycho things to do, and that I’ll be pretty sparse today. Other tycho news: I haven’t seen the latest BSG or Torchwood, and I almost have a copy of the former. I have a Feminist SF post ready to go monday morning, and I just realized that in a week I have to teach a what amounts to a knitting design master class at the yarn store.

So I should get on that. I hope you have enjoyably productive days.

Onward and Upward!

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tagged: observations • tea

In a bit under a month, we–my parents and I–have to go to a wedding. Actually, my father is the best man, but thankfully we like the folks getting married, so it’s not too bad. At the same time, I’m generally of the opinion that weddings suck, and are to be avoided at all costs.

The side effect of this world view is that, I don’t really own clothes that are fancy enough to wear in these situations. This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that I’m a fairly conservative dresser and my normal wardrobe is pretty versatile, so usually I can skate by as long as I don’t need to wear a tie¹. But this wedding thwarted me.

It also–and more importantly–thwarted my mother, who again doesn’t (or didn’t) really have anything dressy/formal enough, for similar sorts of reasons.

So we went shopping.

In a mall.

(Everyone gasp at once here)

Dear lord. That was tiring, and depressing, and stressful. And, being sort of thrifty to begin with², appalling the price of clothing.

And to think, some people go to malls for fun. As recreation.

Dear lord.

In other news, I have a brief story to recount. We were driving (on the way to the mall) and my mother, on the prowl for a diet coke, made an abrupt right turn from the left lane. into a gas station parking lot.

“Jesus,” I screamed reaching for the door jam in hopes that, that might protect me somewhat for the painful death that–at the moment–I felt was imminent.

Incidentally, I also wondered why on earth that particularly deity seemed like the appropriate one to invoke in this situation.

And then I made another realization.

This was, by far, not the first time as a passenger in a car where I felt that my life was endangered by a driver in pursuit of a diet soft drink.

And suddenly I was a little nostalgic.

At least once I started breathing again.

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tagged: observations