Writing

Since this is the last “summer hours” day off that I have, and since John and I are going up to Cleveland to visit my folks (and far-flung relatives who are making a rare visit) I am baking my Grandma’s Sunshine Cake for the occasion.  I call it the cholesterol death cake since it contains a full dozen eggs and just enough cake flour (1 cup) and other ingredients to bind it all together.  Basically, it is only a half-step away from being a souffle, and once it is in the oven there is a strict “no peeking” rule until it is done and ready to take out, as it could fall if you are not careful.  This rule is very hard to follow sometimes, since the cake smells wonderful while it is in the oven.  It tastes pretty darn wonderful once it is out of the over as well.

Everyone has quirks.  I have a ton of quirks.  (Do I ever… just ask John.)  The cats have quirks. (Merlin will purr while she bites you, and Percival likes to lick your feet when you have just gotten out of the shower.  Maybe he likes the taste of slightly soapy water?)

And a lot of my electronics and machines have quirks.

My (admittedly ancient) iPod will occasionally randomly wipe its entire hard drive.  So sometimes I will get into work, go to turn it on, and find that I have a completely empty MP3 player and no tunes to listen to as I code.

I always have to start IE twice on my work laptop before it will take.  99.9% of the time it encounters some kind of “fatal error” and crashes the first time that I try to start it.  I suspect that this is caused by the fact that I have about 6 different web browsers installed on my work computer (the better to test code with, my dear) and not all of the play well with each other.  However, out of all of them, IE is the only browser that has issues.

I always have to start iTunes twice on my home computer.  The first time I start it, it acts like it wants to go through the whole first-time-installed setup routine.  Which I always just cancel out of and double-click the shortcut again.  Whereupon it starts up like normal.

My HTC smartphone has a home screen display that shows the temperature and weather where I am (based presumably on GPS) and mostly this is Dayton.  Except for sometimes when the phone has a little spaz and decides to display the temperature and weather in Miami instead.  (Miami, Ohio?  Miami, Florida?  Who knows.)

The universal remote doesn’t always turn every component of the home entertainment center (TV, tuner, DVD player) on or off when it is supposed to.  (John says that this is because I have poor aim with the remote.)

But these are all just little things, and for the most part I just shrug and let them go.  I don’t think that any of them are indicative of a larger problem, and it just isn’t worth my time or effort to try and figure out how to make sure that all of the electronics in my life work the way that they are supposed to 100% of the time.

I suppose that I find it comforting that my electronics are just as quirky and imperfect as I am…

When I bought my car  seven years ago it was brand new, and had less then 10 miles on the odometer.

Today it rolled over to the 100K mile mark.

Before

After

(Yes, I pulled over to take both pictures, as you can clearly see.)

100+K and the car still runs great and looks pretty good.  Next goal… 200K.

… and so forth.

No, not me.

One of my co-workers, a fellow webdev-type person with interests in standards and mobile applications, had his last day today, and is leaving the green pastures of Elsevier UCD and Dayton for the even greener pastures of a cool new job in Indianapolis.  (I know a lot of people who have gone there for job-related reasons lately…)

I “took charge” (in a very slacktastic sort of way) of arranging his going-away gift.  I collected donations, got his gift (an Amazon gift certificate, which I printed out this morning), and passed around a card (which I ran out to CVS to purchase about mid-morning) for signatures and messages.

I admit that I was not terribly motivated to do a lot in advance as far as getting ready for his departure.  It is a good opportunity for him, but I am not happy that he is leaving our group.    Se la vie, I suppose.

Our group took him out to lunch and presented the card and certificate, final items of business were wrapped up, and then, after he took his final leave, we looted his cubicle.  Hey… you never know what you might need more pushpins, post-it notes, and other assorted office supplies.

Anyway, in these days of online connectedness, I guess that he is not really “gone”.  He is still around, just virtually, rather then tangibly.

My free hammock arrived yesterday.

My office is migrating from one (not so great) Oracle-based back-office system to another (not so great) Oracle-based back-office system and a little while ago I got an email warning me that my “reward points” would not be rolled over into the new system, and that, in essence, I needed to use them or lose them.  I had no idea that I had any “reward points” floating out there in intranet limbo, and for the life of me couldn’t remember what I might have done to get them in the first place.  So when I logged in to the Reward Site to see what was what, it it turned out that I had somehow amassed quite a lot of points indeed.

Ever since John and I got back from Maui last year I have been talking about wanting to get a hammock, but hadn’t yet taken the plunge as far as actually getting it rather then just talking about it.

So I redeemed my “reward points” to obtain a hammock and a hammock stand.  And a couple of DVDs.

And I am looking forward to layout on in the sun on it, book in hand.

My Grandma (who is one of my personal heroes, and I seriously hope that I am like her when I am her age) finally, at 93, decided that it was time to move out of her house and into a retirement apartment.  The house has now been sold and moving plans have been made.

Grandma's house

So she is cleaning out her house.  Aggressively cleaning out her house.  She has lived there for more then 60 years, so there is a lot of stuff to pull out and go through.  John and I went to visit her while we were in Cleveland this past weekend, and ended up leaving her house with a trunk full of boxes of memories.

“You like it?  Take it!”

I understand the sentiment and the necessity behind her directive.  I know that it makes Grandma happy to know that her cherished belongings are going to people who will appreciate them and continue to use them.  I know this, and it still makes me sad to pack up boxes of her stuff and put them in my car.  Because it is change, and I think of it as a sad change – an end of an era.  I am happy that Grandma wants to make sure that I have these things, but the implications make me sad.

I have some of the Russian nesting dolls and other old wooden toys that I used to play with when I was little.  (A snafu with the dolls, I accidentally gave my aunt some nesting dolls that my Mom wanted to keep.  Sorry, Mom.  There were only a few small ones left when I went to Grandma’s and I will bring those back for you when I come to visit next.)

I have some afghans that Grandma’s Mom (or Grandmother, which would be my great-Grandma or great-great-Grandma) crocheted.  (I am actually not totally clear on who actually made them, and I think that Grandma wasn’t 100% sure herself.)

I have a fancy blue-and-white doily that my great-great-Grandma tatted.

I have my Grandma’s old travel journals from the 1930s and 1940s.  I have a lot of memories of going up to the attic bedroom/playroom/workroom when I was younger, pulling the journals off of the bookshelf, and paging through them.

I have some more antique glass pieces, including a green pedestal candy dish that belonged to my great-Grandma and that is the “mate” of the yellow one that I received for Christmas last year.  (I have a lot of antique glass now, and an upcoming project will be to appropriately photo-document, identify, and note down all relevant family stories on each piece.  I also have a bunch of books on antique glassware, which should help supplement Grandma’s notes on all of her pieces.)

I have a carved wooden egg that I always admired, that belonged to my great-Grandfather.

I have a serving tray decorated with dogwood blossoms, strawberries, and other fruits and flowers that was one of Grandma’s wedding presents.  Grandma would always use that tray at Easter to display her Ukrainian Easter Eggs.  I have some of the eggs as well – blown and hand-painted ones as well as some carved and painted wooden ones.

John took a couple of boxes of my Grandfather’s old hand-tools.  (We can use a lot of them on the boat.)  When we were in the workshop corner of the basement looking through his old (all hand made) workbenches and tool cabinets was actually the first time that I can remember being back in that corner of the basement.  When my brothers and I were little, my Grandfather used to admonish us not to go near his workbench and tools – “It is too dangerous!  You could hurt yourself” – and it made such an impression on me that even after he died, I never went back there.

My house now has a lot of things that I remember and used and played with and admired at Grandma’s house.  And the fact that they are at my house now makes them not quite the same things that I remember.  Ahhh, it is hard to explain… Everything just has a different feel, now that they is out of the context (Grandma’s house) in which I was used to seeing them for so long.

She will move while we are on vacation, so I won’t be able to go back to Cleveland to help out one last time.

That was the last time that I will ever see her in her house.  In the house that she moved into when she and Grandpa first got married.  The house that we always went to for holidays and birthdays and other events and celebrations.  Where will we go for Christmas and Thanksgiving now?  (Logically I know that we will have those holidays at my parents’ house, but it will take some getting used to.)

While we were there last weekend, I ran around and took pictures around the house.  I wish that I had done so sooner, while everything looked the way that I remember and before there were boxes and packing material all over.

Every time my parents and I visit, at some point we end up breaking out the wine, fruit-and-cheese-and-crackers tray, and scrabble board.

Scrabble is something to be taken very seriously.  No Scrabble Dictionary with its ridiculous and somewhat questionable seeming words for us (even though my Mom favors it) – it is the OED or nothing.

Scrabble at my parents' house

The first game was fairly normal, with everyone taking the standard “forever” length to peruse their tiles, the placement options available at the time, and finally make a decision.  I can’t remember who won, but it wasn’t me.  I blame the tiles that I drew.  That and the fact the the board layout was one of the worst that I have even played on, with very few available placement options, and was crowded all on only one side of the board.

The second game was more interesting.  We wanted to play a second game, but didn’t want it to last forever, so we did a speed game.  Everyone got exactly 1 minute to put down a word.  It sure cut down on the number of multiple syllable words that were played.  And the whole game took about 20, maybe 30 minutes.

It worked well, but I think that for the next speed game, extending the turn length to about 3 minutes might be better.

My aunt and one of my cousins (I have an aunt, an uncle, and seven cousins in northern Spain, and I always found the story of how my aunt and uncle met to be a fascinating one) were in the country visiting over the past month, which was the impetus for John and I going to spend last weekend in Cleveland for a visit.  I hadn’t seen any of them since 1999 (11 years!  Though I have faithfully sent them Christmas cards every year, and have enjoyed receiving cards in return) when my Mom’s side of the family had a fairly large reunion.

It was nice to see them again, and somewhat eerie how easy it was to fall back into a pattern of idle chit-chat, as though it hadn’t been over a decade since we did more then just say “hi” briefly on the phone.

Hopefully it won’t be another decade plus until the next visit.

I lost the Iron Ring to John last night at fencing practice.

As soon as I had won it at Push, he declared his intention to take it from me.  And since it turns out that challanges can be made and addressed at fight practice as well as at an event, he challenged for it at practice last week.  Unfortunately, there needs to be a warranted marshal to witness the challenge fight, and John and I were the only two fencing marshals at practice last week.

So he tried again this week.  This time we were able to get Sir William to marshal the fight.

As challenger, John chose the form, and picked sword and dagger.  Not my best form, since I have been spending most of my time on single sword – German longsword – lately.

At least I made him work for it.

It was a best of 5 set of fights.  He won 2, then I won 2, then we doubled out once, and then he beat me.

Ah well.  It was good while it lasted.

Maybe I can get it back at Pennsic.

The latest hobby at our house is fishing.

It started when I was trying to decide what to get John for his birthday.  I finally hit on using the boat project for inspiration… something to do on the boat besides sail around the lake… fishing!  When I started to research the types of fish (trout, bass, bluegill, sunfish… river, lake…) available in the SW Ohio region, as well as the different styles of fishing (fly fishing, bait casting, spin casting) and the different weights and permutations of rods and reels and line available for just about every specialized fishing situation that you can come up with, I just started to get overwhelmed.  And I took the easy way out.  I bought him a fishing license (for which I had to surreptitiously steal his driver’s license) and wrapped it up along with a promise to outfit him with the fishing rod of his choice.

I also signed us both up for fly fishing lessons at Orvis, to see if this would be a style that we were interested in.

It turned out that both of us came away from the fly fishing class interested in trying it out “for real” and seeing if we could actually do it and catch fish that way.  We learned the basics of casting (along with the basics of knot tying and a lot of other basics) in the class, and I have to say that fly casting was a lot easier to pick up then I thought that it would be.

Okay, correction.  Picking up fly casting when you are standing in a parking lot with an empty line (no fly and no hook) and learning the correct way to flick the line backwards and forwards for maximum distance and with minimal arm/wrist movement, and no “whip crack” was easier then I thought that it would be.  I have yet to do it “for real” and see if I still think that it is easy.

We didn’t get a fly kit right away after the class.  We wanted to shop around a little bit, and Orvis would have had to order the kit we wanted, as it was out of stock at the time.

We did end up stopping at Dick’s Sporting Goods and picking up a basic spin casting kit.

The day after the class we went to the gun range to do some shooting, and to sight in my new scope (first anniversary present from John) and to try out spin/bait casting.  (We took turns with the rod.)  We had a fun, though not massively productive day.  John caught a bluegill that was deemed to be a “keeper”.  I drowned a bunch of worms and caught nothing.

Then we picked up a fly rod and some flies from Orvis, as well as a second (slightly heavier and better quality) spin casting rod from Dick’s.

Following the acquisition of more rods, we returned to the scene of the original crime (Caesar Creek State Park) and had another go at fishing.  John lost two flies, he and I lost a hook and bobber each (snagged on something underwater), and this time I was the one to catch the single fish of the trip.  (A medium sized sunfish)  Which we took home and fried up and ate.

At least we have never returned home empty-handed from a fishing trip, and I look forward to the day when we catch more then one fish per trip.