Alan had to work late tonight, so I'm sticking with TV in the livingroom to be able to answer the door for trick-or-treaters. We've had more kids than we had last year and some pretty good costumes. For the second year in a row, I had two older guys at the door not even bothering to wear costumes. I don't think I'd find the candy was worth the humiliation. The puppy, I suppose I should start referring to him by his name now, Gambit, is asleep on my foot in between bouts of hyper-excitement at the door. A very pleasant surprise today was that after his first bath with us, Gambit now smells like the "Pat the Bunny" book my grandparents had for when we visited. That powdery, gentle scent engenders so many nice, cozy memory feelings.

Well, we decided on a name for the puppy, Gambit -- appropriate in so many ways. I had to make an emergency run to the pet supply place for chew toys this morning, after tiring of continuing efforts to keep puppy teeth off the legs and edges of our coffee table and other not so toothsome places. I gave the puppy his puppy pacifier and he promptly fell asleep. I also learned that catnip is enough to make our "piggy" cat overcome her fear of the puppy. Gluttony always wins in the end.

The Miracle of Puppy Resiliency

Wow, I actually found our foster puppy on the rescue website after just one search and scanning a few pages. It gives me hope that owners trying to find their animals won't have too much trouble if they've been entered in the system. Here's his page. He's much cuter in person. We had a good day today , especially considering where we started. Wednesday evening, I carried him out of the shelter and put him on the ground to do his thing before our half hour drive home. He immediately scrambled under a nearby truck and then my car and tried, almost successfully, to buck out of his collar and off the leash. Anyone who's ever experienced this with a dog that isn't their own knows how scary that bucking movement can be. Pictures of someone else's pet splattered across a busy road fly through your mind as you try to calm the animal down and get them back inside. I had flashbacks to my days walking dogs at the Minneapolis Animal Shelter. The puppy ended up back in my arms and calmer, although I got a nice warm trail of puppy pee down my leg. I wasn't really thinking that I'd have a dog in the car with me on the way home so I didn't even have a blanket for the back seat. About five minutes into our half hour drive, the aroma of puppy poop permeated the car. I blocked the image from my mind and kept up a little one sided dialogue with him all the way home. The scene when I opened the door to the back seat was so much worse than I ever imagined: seat belts, crevises, cushions, windows not to mention the puppy himself. He spent most of Thursday staying in the bedroom his crate with occassional "nature calls" outings to the nearby bathroom where a kitty litter box resides. I promptly papered the floor with newspaper and we had a good solution for the rest of our floors until we got him potty-trained. Whenever Alan and I were in the room or nearby, he was scrunched tight against the back of the crate. Any time our oldest cat, Tora, came into sight, he growled. Our one trip outside had him hiding against the side of the house under a bush shaking. They warned me that he might not eat for a couple days, but his appetite won out and he ate heartily from the very beginning. He'd let us pet him inside his crate but his little heart was beating overtime. By Friday, he'd come out of the bedroom when we were in the living, get our attention and then scramble back into crate. He played with his new toys that Alan picked up. He ventured out into the livingroom and kitchen following the cat but scrambled back at the smallest sound or movement. Trips outside were the same. Saturday, he was spending more time outside the bedroom when we were around. He and the cat started playing. The cat would hide in a paper grocery bag on its side on the floor and the puppy would get very excited and stick his nose in after him. He looked very disappointed later when the bag was empty and he stuck his head in repeatedly and didn't find a kitty. Puppy containment got much easier with the addition of two safety gates. Our two fraidy cats seem to appreciate the introduction of puppy-free zones, although we still only see them around feeding times. Today, during our trips outside, we ventured into the wider sea of creeping charlie that makes up our side yard and he even flopped contentedly on his side for us to rub his tummy. Right now, he's snoozing on a nest of towels I have for him by the living room couch. So, we may be able to start basic training much sooner than I thought we would, we only require a name. He was Jordan at the shelter but we've been invited to give him a new one. We've tried a baby name book I got in high school for naming characters and Louisiana and cajun names. Alan's leaving it up to me, although he has veto power. We've come up with a shortlist of Chase and Riddick and Dustin (which means "of the storm") and Tristan. I'm not thrilled with any of them. I promised I'd have one tonight, so I'd better get back to it.

So what's been happening the past month?

BIG NEWS: Since Wednesday evening, we are hosting a refugee from Hurricane Katrina. Picture coming soon. A 12 week old shepherd (mix?) or an Australian cattle dog. Not sure which. The little guy is traumatized and very shy. Our goal as foster parents is to get him socialized and give him a home until his family claims him or he's able to be adopted. He's already bonded with our oldest cat -- the one who missed our old dog the most. The other two have been MIA except for feeding time.

Huge, 50 year old maple next to our house brought down and chopped up over the last four days. Very sad -- the oldest tree on our lot -- first tree my grandparents planted -- but splitting down the middle. It took three and a half days and two people and two chainsaws. Saved us $2,500 doing it ourselves. Thank goodness for dads who are retired and have power tools. We now have sun where none was found before and a lot more yard. I'm totally in love with his electric 2.5 amp chainsaw.

The Twin Cities Book Fest. Always fun to catch up with the Rain Taxi and Minnesota literary crowd. We were there armed with 'zines and chapbooks. Sales were up from last year. Wish there were more participants for the Twin City genre scene, though.

A trip to Fargo/Moorhead with my dad for a family wedding and time to tour Moorhead to see my dad's old house and neighborhood.

A visit to The Wildcat Sanctuary to meet with Executive Director Tammy Quist, to see if there was any way I could help and to trade resources. We may need to start a support group for directors of nonprofits who are trying to go from volunteer to paid staff. I felt very privileged to be able to tour the sanctuary with her since it's closed to the public for the cats' sakes. So many sad stories. I can't believe people take these wild animals for pets. It's a labor of love for Tammy and has consumed her whole life. They have a great website. You should visit it. As the only wildcat sanctuary in the upper midwest, she deserves our support.

I finished a story! After battling through a year of frequent bouts of writing but not finishing anything/not writing, I have completed a novella. Feels very good.

More basement stuff but we're all getting bored of that. I'll have pictures for comments soon.

I had to take a shudder break from the basement. Shudder as in, "Today I found the spider motherload." One small shelf containing a couple huge, green, 60s or 70s era ashtrays, some old idenitfiable cans of paint, a few old canning jars, a few pots, a box that used to contain one of those single-hand springy things for building grip which now contained numerous small unidentifiable items, a piece of driftwood, a tea can containing beads and four huge spiders and a lot of little ones. There were also a number of spider carcasses -- possible victims of cannibalism? Two of the cats sat watching me from the stairs but provided no help. They've all been a little crazy since the weather changed. Cold weather seems to bring out the crazies. Our youngest has been on a particular terror and has broken two wedding gifts, a glass and a plate in the past week. One of the wedding gifts is completely fixable just requiring a little regluing of the frame. The other was a chalice or cup of blessings given to us by the pastor who married us. She held it up during the ceremony and had people suggest things to fill it for a good marriage. I was a little freaked out when it first broke thinking, "What does this bode for the future?" It was on the very top shelf pushed back from the edge for safekeeping. We still remember the contents so maybe we can replace it. The youngest cat is our little piggy. She's athletic and likes getting up high at times but is a bit clumsy and her extra weight -- despite her continuing diet -- doesn't help. Back to work now, I'm no longer feelings things running up and down inside my clothing.

Yuck! All the spiders driven out of the refinished part of the basement have taken up residence in other parts. I went to throw some laundry in the washer and got my head caught in a web akin to those John Goodman battled. I, too was creeped out by the movie. Heck, I was creeped out by the giant spider episode of Gilligan's Island as a child. Tomorrow, I bring out the big guns -- the vacuum cleaner with long tube attachments.

I was going to go into a long description of doing the floors just in case someone else wants to tackle a similar project someday. I don't have the energy to write about it today. I spent most of the day washing awful smelling, musty wooden furniture with a 50% bleach mixture someone recommended for removing the smell. It seems to have helped quite a bit and I may be able to donate the pieces in question after all. I still have a drawer stuck in one of the dressers but haven't given up on getting it loose, yet. I need to get it out of our house so I have room to work. Also - ONE PUMP ORGAN FREE TO A GOOD HOME IF YOU COME GET IT. It was on the dry side of the basement and shouldn't be as musty.

Gwenda wanted someone to start talking about Serenity. No spoilers here. Alan and I went to see it Saturday. It was a lot of fun and scary and sad. My need for more Firefly has only grown, however, so there'd better be a sequel. One review had said it felt more like a series of episodes strung together rather than a movie. I thought the story line tied together well following the advertised theme of River. Although it was brutal, I liked the gritty reality of the fight scenes. There will have to be a sequel since we need to see what happens in the AFTERMATH. I'd be really interested in hearing what someone who hadn't watched the series thought of it.

Is anyone else watching Rome on HBO? Alan and I have become hooked on it. I like it almost as much as I like Deadwood. It's one of the few shows that I want to watch the episode again to see what I missed before the next one appears. This last episode, wow.

So, I've been off work for over a month. I've been working hard, physically, but another part of me feels like I've been mentally wallowing a bit. Well maybe not wallowing but possibly hiding from reality. I had lunch with a former co-worker this week and things are changing for the better at my old job. I had to ask myself if I should have stuck it out. At this point, I have to say I'm happy with my chosen path. I've decided to start a nonprofit to refurbish donated PCs for low-income families. I'm still looking for a good name for it, if anyone has any ideas. Some names we've tried Technology Access Project (TAP) and assorted variations of Bridging the Digital Divide. To keep some income flowing in, I'll do some consulting IT/Communications and possibly find a part-time job, too.

Basement Fix-up Part One: Asbestos
I've been working on our basement so I can set up an office and workshop down there. It's taken so much longer than I thought it would. I've finished about a third of the room which is where the office and workshop will be as well as the lone toilet my grandparents installed. So much stuff! So much more to do! We just got the results of the materials I sent for asbestos testing. The floor tile which covers part of the basement near the washer and dryer came back clear, but fifteen percent of the pipe wrap is asbestos. The tile was the main concern since most tile and mastic back then had asbestos. The pipe wrap which is black, thick and tough, was an afterthought as they included two sample bags with the test kit. It follows a pipe from the meter all along the wall above where I'll be working. A couple parts of it have slightly lifted from the pipe. I think I'll be able to get by covering it with a protective wrap and not removing it. The tiles would have been tougher since some of them are broken and coming up off the floor. They would have had to been removed. Old houses. There's always something.

Decimating Prime Spider Habitat
We bought my grandparent's house which was very far from being empty when we moved in. We managed after a few months of living in the house to move most of their stuff out of the upstairs rooms. Some of it was given away immediately and some was moved to the basement to be sorted later. The basement and then garage filled so quickly, we had to stop until we had a garage sale last summer. We didn't get rid of much stuff and I never really had time to dig in to the basement until now. I've been spending most of my time off down there. It took me a couple weeks just to clean out about a third of it. It's enough space to set up my office and a work area for the computers. I don't think I've ever seen so many spiders in my entire life. We had pale ones and black ones and red ones and taupe ones and little, teeny ones and big fat ones. Because this is Minnesota, most were on the smaller side. One of the main benefits of getting a hard freeze each winter is that bug size is limited up here. The most notable experience occurred when I was moving a box and a marble rolled out. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a blur streaking across the floor and the marble stopped dead. A brown spider, not super huge but big enough to give me pause, was wrapped around the marble. I eyed it nervously as I moved the box away and then when I got back it was gone. I knew I'd have to face it eventually. There were two dressers and a couple of boxes left of the section before I was done. I occassionally saw him watching me from under one of the dressers but had many other spiders and webs to deal with before him. An old fashioned broom is a wonderful web fighting utensil. Sweep up the web some times complete with spider, run out the garage and shake the broom. Again and again and again. Later that week, I was moving another box and I felt that light tracing of furry feet scurrying down my arm and thankfully, off my leg onto the floor. Lacking other cover, he hid in the cap of a can of spray paint. I slammed a can of paint down on top of it and took the whole thing carefully outside where I deposited him on the lawn to continue his contribution to pest control. I was curious so I looked the critter up online. It seems he was a wolf spider which is a hunting spider. Hunting spiders don't use webs to catch their food which explains the whole marble thing. People used to believe they hunted in packs which is where they got their name. There are a couple of short articles by Kevin Strauss on wolf spiders on the ElyMinnesota.com site, if anyone is interested: Wolf Spiders Seek Warm Homes and Bugs in Winter.

Next: Basement Fix-up Part Two - How Do You Make Cement Floors and Block Walls Cozy?

Not much to post. My first week of vacation was spent sick and in pain (which has mostly passed.) This week was spent trying to catch up on everything I was supposed to do last week while still trying to take it easy. Not much to post about although I did a lot of reading and should probably some short reviews. Tonight I was catching up on people's blogs and searching the IMDB for random things. We had on the movie Ghost Ship. Neither of us were watching it closely - it was more background noise. (It was the presence of Eomer in the movie that started the whole IMDB thing. Next year, he'll be starring in a movie called Outlander - no not the Diana Gabaldon one - which has aliens and vikings. With pirates, Antonio Banderas, sword fighting, and witty repartee, these are some of my favorite things in movies. Together, they could be really, really bad or this can be the most awesome movie ever. I'd give the better odds to the bad end of things. Still, he scowls his way through movies better than anyone else out there right now. If you don't believe me, take another look at LOTR II and III and Chronicles of Riddick.) Anyway, another search turned up something disturbing, something I would have questioned I really saw if Alan hadn't also witnessed. Now we can't reproduce it. Maybe you can. Here's the link. Let me know if you see it, too.

This blog has always been a perfect mirror of my work life. When I got too busy or stressed about work, I'd stop blogging. When things were fairly smooth, I'd write. After 11 years with same nonprofit, I gave two weeks notice last Friday. It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made and there will be times that I will regret it, I'm sure. I mostly felt relief when I finally decided and that alone tells me it is the right thing.

The thing everyone asks is, "What's next?" I DON'T KNOW! Various things have been winging away inside my head;try to pick up some freelance writing work, start a consulting business focusing on small business and nonprofit IT and communication needs, temp work while I decide what to do, start a nonprofit to refurbish donated computers for low income people - I never had enough time for this in my current job, try the corporate side and make a little more money...

In the meantime, I'm going to take a couple of well-earned vacation weeks and do some writing, gardening and work on our house. Mostly I'll just veg out a little - that and stay away from our Gamecube - I've been blowing way too much time trying to zone out after work playing Mario Sunshine lately.

So, my blog template finally imploded. Okay, it's been imploding for a while. I finally got a chance to put up a quick fix. It was a good thing to work on while watching Purple Rain for about the milliionth time. Alan had never seen it -- another sign of our generation gap -- and somehow I got sucked in during a break from weeding. The music does bring back memories. One of the strongest memories was from my high school civics class. The class itself was boring and was made worse by the teacher's voice which droned on and on in a deep monotone as he repeated everything we had just read from the textbook. One of my friends, Dave was listening to his headphones, a very common thing in a class where a couple people actually spread out on the floor under their desks and slept during class on a regular basis. Class was going along normally and Dave broke the silence with a very loud, "Ooooey, oooey, ooo," complete with Tyme-like arm flapping. When he realized what he'd done, he slunk down in his chair and removed his headphones. The teacher hardly missed a beat. Now, back to weeding.

Via PNN Online

Oxford University Press has teamed up with Book Aid International to provide a $10 rebate on the new Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition, if you donate your old dictionary to charities in the poorest English speaking countries. The deal includes a postage paid mailing label. For more details see their website at: NOAD Rebate Program

Wiscon as usual was lovely, far too quick and way too short/just the perfect length.

I woke with a sore throat this morning which is a small price to pay for the activities that filled the last five days. I've had a slightly different Wiscon since I've become involved with the organizational side of things. It's busier but no less enjoyable. I cut back even further this year by not signing up for panels or readings but things seemed to stay just as busy. A lot of the Wiscon concom completely give up their lives for the span of the con to make it work. To those of us on the outside it seems so seamless but it isn't.

Lots of highlights, too many to count, but here are a few:

Singing along to karaoke Centerfold by J. Giels Band with Cliff

Sushi, twice, with Karen

Visiting with Jeremiah and Par, though my time with them was way too short

Sharing stories of convention geeky shyness - you know those times when you find yourself alone and panic and think that no one likes you, knows you, wants to hang with you..

Hanging with Elad and hearing about his life and girlfriend

Seeing Maureen McHugh - actually, walking right past her, gorgeous but hard to recognize with her temporary straight hair - and Bob again

Meeting people at packet stuffing and registration

Finding out that David Moles had been in Tokyo at the same time I was, although he was in high school and I was in college. It was an amazing moment to find we'd both found the best two places for American style burgers, the well-known Hard Rock and lesser known, Homeworks.

Lots of great advice on pregnancy, motherhood, etc. from all the wonderful new mom authors at the con - and no this is not a way to say that I'm pregnant. Sorry Mom and Dad.

You've got to check out the link below to Technorati's Wiscon tag page and check out the photos. There's the one of the cutest photos ever of Alan and the much cuter Meghan McCarron (sp?)

I love hosting the party at Wiscon. Over the past few years, we've kept Wiscon dancing and for the past two proved that a SF convention can handle karaoke. This year, the Speculative Literature Foundation was a co-sponsor and we had a great turn-out. While we were cleaning up and shooing people out of the suite at the end of the party this year (at 3:15 a.m. ) the con party organizers, Scott and Jane, mentioned the possibility of moving the party to the ballroom next year which would allow later nights, less crowding and more room for socializing and watching. We'd be able to bring our beer and cider and other refreshments although there might be a corkage fee. We'd have an actual dance floor and might be able to bring in a real DJ and equipment. All of these are big plusses. The thought of moving off of the party floor makes me panic a bit, though, since so many of the people hang out in the hall outside the party at least part of the time and come and go from other parties. Would anyone come see us downstairs? If anyone reads this, let me know what you think.

wiscon

Dang! Another month had passed...

1. The person (or persons) who passed the baton to you.
   Richard.
2. Total volume of music files on your computer.
   Since going through 2 hard drives in short succession earlier this year we are down to nothing. I don't even have the punk kitties from Rathergood anymore.
   
3. The title and artist of the last CD you bought.
   Alan got me a CD of the Von Bondies since I loved the FX show Rescue Me's theme song so much. My husband is pretty much my music source.
   
4. Song playing at the moment of writing.
   No music now since I'm in a hotel room and it's still early. I did spend a lot of the weekend crammed into Alan's office closet doing some emergency work on our bathtub plumbing. I listened to what Alan had in his boombox which included the Von Bondies CD, a southeast Asian hip hop band, MIA, and a funky jazz band, Medecki (sp?) Martin and Wood. I found the first three tracks on the Von Bondies CD the most helpful when I was tearing out the old faucet pipes.
   
5. Five songs you have been listening to of late (or all-time favorites, or particularly personally meaningful songs)
   
   • "Cmon, C'mon," Von Bondies
     
   • Any of the music from Deadwood
     
6. The five people to whom you will 'pass the musical baton.' Is there anyone who hasn't done this, yet?
   

It's been forever since I last posted anything and the longer you go without posting the harder it gets to start again. At first I was dealing with a lot of wrist and arm pain from overdoing things and since I couldn't stop using the computer at work, I stopped using it at home. At work, things have been too busy for posting. I love my job but I sometimes wonder if I'll ever get caught up.

This is the last of a series of long work days. We've packed up most of our offices and should be ready for the movers on Monday. I'm stuck here waiting for what appears will be a seven hour long full back-up of our server to end. One of our supporters made a very generous donation of an old mansion a block south of Franklin on Pillsbury for our offices. The move is really needed since we're overcrowded here but I'm feeling a little sad. I've been here for eleven years now and the building feels like home. (I'm also a little sad because we were planning on attending the Nebulas this weekend until I realized it coincided with the move. It would have been nice to be able to cheer Chris on in person. We'll be there tomorrow in spirit.) We didn't always occupy this part of the building. When I first started this part was Southside Family School, one of the first charter schools in Minneapolis. They eventually had to move and ended up at the old St. Stephens Church school. As we expanded, we slowly took over more and more until we had most of the second floor. There are only two of us left on staff that even remember being in any other space. The shelter will stay in the basement so I'll be back here on a regular basis.

Tomorrow a couple of volunteers and I will sort through our computer parts and donations to try to put together three more workstations we need and to see if any of the rest can be given to the families in our transitional housing program. Yesterday afternoon, I finally had a chance to try to fix on old HP LaserJet 4si printer that stopped working two months ago. Right now, we all have access to our wonderful networked copier for printing but in the new place we'll be spread out over three floors. I'd like to have a laser printer on each floor and don't want to spend any money we don't have to. After getting it running nicely on the network and printing without smudges, I noticed I was getting some weird irregularly spaced dents in the paper. I narrowed the problem down to the area around the fuser assembly and decided to try to remove to see if I could tell what was causing the dents. It was surprisingly easy to remove. When I tipped it sideways I could see a lot of brown stuff stuck to the rollers. Replacing it is doable - there seem to be spare parts for the old LaserJets all over the place - but it would be a chunk of change. I didn't know if cleaning it would cause any damage but I figured we didn't have anything to lose. The brown stuff was baked on but it started to come off on the Q-tips I was using with a little anti-static cleaner. Water wasn't cutting it. I had a shop light clipped next to me and when it started getting hot I noticed a sweet smell rising from the fuser. The brown stuff was chocolate. The fuser is pretty inaccessible, buried deep under the closed cover. The chocolate must have been solid when it passed the first sets of rollers and toner, etc. and only melted when it hit the fuser. I was able to remove almost all of it and the printing and paper is now pristine. I would give quite a bit to know how the chocolate got into the printer in the first place. It took a long time to fix. My admiration for the designers of those early LaserJets only continues to grow.

I got behind in everything over the last few weeks. The clutter on my desk has spilled over and is making a bid to take over and force out my two officemates. I succeeded in not adding anything more to the pile but did nothing today to reduce it. I did make progress on the laundry over the weekend, and after tearing more of the garage ceiling out, have determined that the bathtub is leaking from pipes going into the tub and not out of the tub as previously suspected, or possibly, is leaking from both places. Fixing the leak is going to require removing the faucets and pulling off the tub surround, so... Did I mention that I made good progress on the laundry this weekend?

Anyway, I started getting caught up on blogs and e-mails this weekend, and found Gwenda's links on the Dairy Queen Moolatte controversy. I was dismayed at first and then amused. The interview with the Dairy Queen executive was painful to read. Dairy Queen is based in my hometown, Bloomington, so I can understand why he didn't recognize the critic's sarcasm at first. I've never encountered the word "mulatto" outside of books and film. (In this part of the country, sadly, to most people, if you are black, you are black and that's that, there's no need for further distinctions.) Who knows why he didn't seem to get it after a couple of sentences? I have had at least three conversations with African American and other co-workers on the subject of Moolattes and other iced coffee drinks and none of us ever made the connection. I wonder if it's because like me, in their minds, they stretch out the Moo to be a cow sound and are heavy on the -te. I always felt silly ordering it before on my once every few weeks splurge, now I'll feel a little more guilty, too.

Diversicon was a fun, relaxed convention with friendly people and interesting panels. We've decided that this will be an annual event on our calendar and now we hope to draw as many others to it as we can. At about 120 attendees, there's plenty of room and it's easy on the pocketbook. The auction had a lot of great stuff that went cheap. We got a load of books, DVDs and video tapes for only $30. When I was writing out the check, I felt a little guilty, but only a little since we so recently faced one of us being out of work. My favorite item was a video tape of Scaramouche (and also Waterloo) for only $1 (or was it $2?) When Eric announced this pairing, mine was the only bid and my arm (probably the one that sometimes pretends it's accustomed to holding a sword) shot up completely on it's own accord. The auction was followed by a concert by Keg Salad, a band that you need to see, along with its sister band, Mad Melancholy Monkey Mind, if you ever get a chance. In addition, there was scotch, there was beer, there were readings, there were movies, there were books, there was poetry and we were there with 'zines and chapbooks.

A very good end to the day and the week. Alan may no longer be unemployed, I received a promotion, the cats already are starting to get along better thanks to the Feliway, my review copy of the The Anchor Book of New Amercian Short Stories (edited by Ben Marcus) arrived, I received a beautiful box of new managed network cards courtesy of FedEx and 2BuyStore to replace the ones we lost to the lightning strike, and I got the great feeling of accomplishment and closure that comes from solving a nagging tech problem before I had to leave for the day. (I spent the free moments of the day wrangling with one of those nasty browser hijackers on a friends laptop. Stupid little ziphelp.exe file. I'll post details later tonight, since the only full instructions I found on removing it were in German. We love you designers of Hijack This!)

After evening drinks at Kieran's last night to say good-bye to co-worker, former boss and buddy John, I met up with Alan, Mark, Martha and others at Dulonos. We'll be spending the weekend at Diversicon where Mark is the Special Guest. In addition to catching up a little with Mark and Martha, I had a great discussion with Steve and Shari about sleep disorders, met Guest of Honor S.P. Somtow, who is fascinating, and Alan and I signed up for a table at the convention, which will lead to us actually saving money on memberships. Mark and Martha will be playing for us in their Keg Salad incarnation on Saturday, otherwise I have no set plans for the whole weekend. Yay!

It's been a really nice weekend so far. I've been sitting on the couch with my laptop watching the end of Bringing up Baby and catching up on everyone's blogs in kind of a blissful haze. Despite Alan's being laid off earlier this week, we managed a nice birthday celebration for him on Friday. In the evening, we went to see the Bourne Supremacy (I loved the car chase scenes!) which he bypassed last weekend to see The Village as an indulgence for me. It was dinner time after the movie, but we'd filled up on popcorn so we went and did some writing at a local bookstore/coffee shop. Alan is working on an epic poem - I'm not sure that's the right term for it but I mean epic in the sense that it's really long. While I struggled to find some focus, he was writing away and would look every up once and a while ask something like, "How do you spell chrysanthemum?" and then go back to writing. We found a really good book called, cat vs. cat: Keeping Peace When You Have More Than One Cat. Ever since we lost our dog last summer to cancer, our house has been a war zone with our three cats playing the roles of Serbs, Croats and Bosnians. I've only read two chapters but I've already discovered that the litterboxes were most likely disputed territory with the dominant cat sprawling nearby probably preventing access to them when we thought he was just lounging. The man behind the counter at the bookstore asked me if I had cats. I laughed and said I had too many and explained the situation. He looked kind of sad and longing and said, "I love cats." When I told Alan about it later, he said I should have offered him one of ours. We looked at all three and worked through various scenarios. In all three cases, removal of one of the felines resulted in detente, but then we were faced with which one and, of course, that's an impossible question. (Tonight, the two aggressors are sprawled in their favorite spots looking cute. It's a deceiving cuteness, though, since the terrorized one is conspicuously missing. He disappeared after an incident a little while ago that occurred out of my sight but involved a mad scramble and some hissing.) After the bookstore, we had takeout at home and watched Secret Window on pay per view. It was the only movie on at that time and I had wanted to see it after seeing a preview (and for Johnny Depp), but this one was one I should have waited to see on free cable. Today we headed over to my parent's house to say good-bye to the Asia-dwelling contigent of the family. They're heading back to Beijing to get ready for school. My cousin will be starting college at Wellesley and her brother will be back to highschool. It makes me feel so old to think that I was in college and in Tokyo with them when he was born. We had a few good games of croquet, good conversation (including some strong mixed views on The Village), and a great turkey dinner with lots of leftovers to take home. The spooky kitty just came out of hiding to let me know it's time for their last feeding and it's probably time for me to stop rambling and go to bed. First, I suppose I should weigh in a little on The Village. I never really paid much attention to the M. Night hullabaloo, although I've seen all the movies. A trailer of The Village gave me the chills and provided a couple nights of very creative, creepy nightmares, something that hasn't happened since I was young and watching Mel's Matinee, a show that I found out was also an influence on the Coen Brothers. So, while I watched, there was already a fond spot in my mind for the "movie that could have been" which made me a more generous viewer. Occasionally, the "movie that was" tipped its hat to the "movie that could have been" and once or twice it rose above it. Mostly, it was just a very different movie, one that never bored me, had a lot of suspenseful moments, was beautifully filmed and acted, and ultimately, although in my opinion an enjoyable movie, wasn't as good as it could have been.

Happy Birthday, Alan!

I noticed recently that time lags in my blog directly relate to increases in workplace stress. It has been a stressful month, even with a vacation thrown in the middle. Anyways, this made me angry enough to interrupt work to post.

Asian American Journalist Association's Statement on Cheney Campaign Background Checks