January 2006 Archives

...So after wondering why Oreo, our kitty, has been listless, nauseous, and generally unresponsive for days, we took her into the vet to discover she is suffering from kidney failure, and was so dehydrated that we had to take her in (last night) to get an IV bag of fluids. Julie's going back today (this morning) to go for a second hydration round so she can watch how to... administer... the IV. That's right, we get to regularly infuse our poor ailing kitty with fluids. Maybe once a week... maybe twice a day. We don't know yet.

*sigh*. When is it time to throw in the towel? Julie says she's willing to put in the effort for as long as it actually seems to help. I agree with the sentiment, but living the DIWK lifestyle (Double Income With Kids) doesn't leave a lot of time for kitty maintenance. And this isn't even mentioning the vet bills which have just begun and which promise to get much worse before the end.

The end. I have to say this is the first time as an adult that I've had to deal with end-of-life issue with a pet, and it brings up all sorts of issues around death in general, and one's attitudes towards it. In specific, when do you let go when you know the inevitable is near. There's some unspoken equation that happens in our heads and hearts that balances the expense (time, money, emotion, physical pain) against the benefits (retaining the life of the one you love). With people I suppose the benefits are higher, so we tend to fight longer and spend more, but it's really the same equation. Problem is, with animals, you can't ask them when they think they're done. In a sense, it's like taking care of some one dying of a mind-debilitating disease, where they no longer can give input in on the process. In the end, it turns out the decision seems to be more about the survivors than about the dying. How do you value life, and how does that value effect your decisions? With pets, it also brings up the question of how you make decisions between the differences of life, between human life and animal life. Again, as a meat-eater, the question becomes less about life and more about how much we care about that life. Oh great, now it moves from the realm of the abstract to the personal. If you decide to give up the fight, does that mean you just don't care enough to fight anymore? Does that mean the animal/person/whatever dies because of a defect in your own personal make-up?

Now don't worry, I'm not taking it that far -- I'm just being philosophical. But, it does give one a lot to think about. Personally, I think the whole thing is rather organic and the decision presents itself when it must. For now, we've entered down that road and for now, we're going to play the game of help her survive. The balance sheet is started, and we're filling in the double columns.

It's nearly two in the morning -- what am I still doing up? Too much coffee during a game of Star Wars RPG, plus catching up with LOST TiVo'd from earlier, and my mind is buzzing. Of course, now that I'm actually blogging, the tired is hitting me, so I'll cut it short. I feel like starting today I finally got a hold of this year by the tail. I burned through like 30 email responses, got some headway on a major high-priority chunk of code for work (converting Pachyderm's OS X - specific image previewing code to a platform-independant solution), and finished up lettering Gloomcookie 26 a few days ago. I still have some things on my plate to take care of, but I feel like I'm now on top of the waves instead of beneath them. I'm going to attempt to blog every day again. I've done it both ways, and I think the longer I let myself get away with saying nothing, the less likely I am to write anything meaningful. Also, I think I would like to get started on writing 'morning pages' again -- that sort of flow was really good for my creativity, and I haven't been doing it in over six months. Actually, probably closer to a year, since Isaac's been born. Man, time flies.

So, expect to read more of me here, even if it's banal and meaningless, it'll be my particular brand of chatter. And every once in a while, if you're lucky, I'll drop a gem into the mix. No really, I promise :).

He's walking. 10 months old, and he's taking steps. he's gotten up to 7 in a row I think (or maybe 8), and he generally doesn't fall. He senses his balance is going, and he sits or goes to hands and feet. I'm utterly amazed.

Wow, where *did* the time go? And so much has occurred in the last few weeks. I have blog entries waiting to be born, and others that have died stillborn in the mind before I could execute them to text. Things I want to talk about (but not tonight):

1) 'Lestat' the play.
2) New Honda Odyssey
3) Macworld SF
4) there was something else.

It's futile to try to recreate what I had to say, but I might get to some of this in the future. Now that I've broken the ice, I'll post something more interesting tomorrow.

I know I've just put another check mark on my government dossier by posting this, but you have done the same by reading it. Cheers.

Interview with LSD inventor, Albert Hofman, who's now 100: "Xeni Jardin:

In today's NYT, a fascinating interview with 'father of acid' (and pal of Timothy O'Leary) Albert Hoffman, who turned 100 this week.

His work on ergot produced several important drugs, including a compound still in use to prevent hemorrhaging after childbirth. But it was the 25th compound that he synthesized, lysergic acid diethylamide, that was to have the greatest impact. When he first created it in 1938, the drug yielded no significant pharmacological results. But when his work on ergot was completed, he decided to go back to LSD-25, hoping that improved tests could detect the stimulating effect on the body's circulatory system that he had expected from it. It was as he was synthesizing the drug on a Friday afternoon in April 1943 that he first experienced the altered state of consciousness for which it became famous. 'Immediately, I recognized it as the same experience I had had as a child,' he said. 'I didn't know what caused it, but I knew that it was important.'

When he returned to his lab the next Monday, he tried to identify the source of his experience, believing first that it had come from the fumes of a chloroform-like solvent he had been using. Inhaling the fumes produced no effect, though, and he realized he must have somehow ingested a trace of LSD. 'LSD spoke to me,' Mr. Hofmann said with an amused, animated smile. 'He came to me and said, 'You must find me.' He told me, 'Don't give me to the pharmacologist, he won't find anything.' '

(Via Boing Boing.)

Okay... Movable Type 3.2 rocks. I may have to pay for it (so far it runs without errors, but it might ping back to sixapart or something, and besides -- it's only $99 for unlimited personal use, so perhaps it's worth it) but for now, I'm 'evaluating' the software. I've been installing all sorts of new cool plug-ins, and soon I'll revamp my templates to reflect all the new cool capabilities. You probalby already see that my links section looks different. It uses a 'blogroll' plug-in that makes handling links much so much easier. To those on my system -- if you want some instruction on how to use the blogrolls, ask me and I'll help you out.

Hey everyone,

So this all started when I could no longer post to my blog. It was totally unexplainable, especially since a) I hadn't changed anything and b) other users could still post just fine, and c) the entries entered the database but did not rebuild.

*sigh*

So, I bit the bullet and tonight I upgraded to MT 3.2, which is supposed to be payware but it appears to run fine w/o it. If they ding me, I'll more than happily pay the $99 unlimited personal use fee, since I'm not making any money off of my blog software or service. I give it away, give it away, give it away now. My first impressions is that it's totally slick, and provides more power and more options... and even better -- it posts my messages now.

I'm tired, punchy, and should really go to bed. it's 1:46AM, for Ganesha's sake. Okay... as soon as I stop farking around with the shiny new plug-ins I can install, I'll shut down and go to sleep.

First off, Happy New Year. 2005 flew the *bleep* by, and so much was packed into that fateful year that it makes one's head spin just trying to do a mental recap... so I won't even try. It's done, good riddance, I got some cool stuff out of it (like Isaac), and there was plenty bad left behind as well. Let's hope for a more productive, safer, happier, and impeachment-laden 2006.

But, since we last left our hero...

The last week or so has been a whirlwind, and during most of it I have managed to stay unplugged (for the most part... no really!), and I really got absolutely NOTHING done other than relaxation, hanging with my family, oh yeah and cleaning out mud and muck from Julie's mother's store, not to mention getting over a cold and nursing Elijah through 3 days of high fever hell, but more details to follow.

Last week, starting on the 27th, we packed up the family and headed out to Stinson Beach to spend the week with Julie's family. We were in this really cool 4-bedroom on the beach that had bunk beds for the boys, a room for ourselves plus Isaac, a room for D & K, and a room for Z. Julie's parents have a 2-bedroom cabin out on the beach themselves, so they would head over in the morning, stay the day, and then head home to sleep in the evening. It was a pretty tight deal.

Wednesday the 28th, I headed out to Sacramento with very good friends to catch Dieselboy spin live at some club whose name is unimportant. We had an awesome time. I stayed out late, slept in late, and then hustled my butt back to the beach the next day afternoon. I started feeling a little sick that morning, so I think that's where I might have first encountered 'the bug'. But, I headed back to the beach after picking up needed supplies, and stayed out with family until Saturday the 31st, when it became apparent that a) the power was out, b) the flood waters were rising, and c) we needed to get the heck out of Dodge before we were stuck with no power and no supplies out at the beach. It's about that time that we found out that Julie's moms's store in San Anselmo had about 2 1/2 feet of water flood through it, drenching thousands of dollars of merchandise and filling the store with inches of mud, silt, debris and who knows what else. So, we spent the day packing up all our crap and heading back inland. Many of our normal routes were closed due to landslide, but luckily Hwy 1 was still open, which we managed to navigate at dusk all the way back out. We celebrated New Years Eve together with family at a Chinese/Japanese restaurant (Totally awesome!) and then hung out at Julie's parents' place. Julie and her mom took off to the store to survey the damage, and then returned for the big ring-in. We didn't watch the NYC festivities -- watched SF instead. Felt weird not to watch the vampire Clarkstat ring in the new year, but hey -- not my TV. After that, we packed up the kids and went home.

All was well until about 2-3am when Eli woke up with a burning fever and totally cranky. Great way to ring in the new year. Julie and I took turns taking care of the little boy, and the next day we got Julie's aunt J to babysit the tykes while Julie and I headed over to the store to help clean up. We spent the entire day doing triage on the store, and I helped scrap out gallons and gallons of mud and water from the recesses of the store. Thank the lord for shop wetvacs, is all I have to say. Exhausted and aware our little one was not fairing well, we opted out of evening family festivities, and headed home to take care of our children. Eli was up all night long every six hours whenever the Motrin wore off, and his fever was consistently 102 and above. We'd dose him again, try to get him to sip some water, and try to get him comfortable enough to sleep again. Monday the next day he was no better, and I had caught the bug myself, though to a lesser degree. So I spent the day taking care of both children, feeling crappy myself, and struggling to stay above water (with the help of Julie's dad) while Julie went back to the store to continue helping putting the store in order. That evening I was all wonky and sleep-screwed (as I am tonight) and stayed up way too late watching the first of two disks of an Ivanhoe miniseries. Crazy, man.

This morning, Eli's fever broke and I was feeling pretty close to normal (though beat as hell), and we took both kids into the doctor. Isaac was having his 9-month well visit (and immunizations) and they checked Eli for Strep (the 10-min initial test came back negative, and we get the culture results tomorrow, but chances are it's just garden-variety nasty virus.) We rolled out, picked up our pets from doggy and kitty camp, I managed to do a little shopping, shoved some food in our mouths, spent some time cleaning the house, and then I spent the last hour helping julie organize her iTunes playlist so she can fit songs onto the 40 gig ipod she inherited from me (which by the way, only holds about 36 gigs of music.) That brings me to just about fifteen minutes ago, in which I finished, set the pod to synch, and started writing this blog entry. Tomorrow morning Julie leaves early to go to Seattle for the day, and I'll be left dropping off all the kids and picking them up as well. I'm highly tempted to try to work from home, because the drop off and pick up is brutal, but I wasn't in work today due to sick recovery, and I won't be in Friday, so I am in conflict about it. I'd get more work in if I just stay at home, so I may opt for that option.

In any case, it's past 1am and I should get my ass in bed. So, let's wrap with some revelations and resolutions:

1. Revelation -- playing with kids is fun, and I don't do it nearly enough.
2. Revelation -- doing nothing at all is therapeutic.
3. Resolution -- No more smoking for me. I've 'quit' smoking over ten years ago, but I still from time to time have been known to bum a cig, or buy the occasional pack for 'parties', etc. Several weeks ago I bought a pack, smoked a bunch of it at a party, and got a nasty chest cold that wouldn't go away. I found myself smoking the remainder of the pack while I was sick and it got WAY worse. They are insidious killers, and I want no more part of them. I have plenty of other vices to kill me off.
4. Revelation -- getting enough sleep is more than just nice, it's essential.
5. Resolution -- I'm going to give myself enough sleep on a consistent basis so that I can have the reserves to handle emergencies (such as sick children), and so when I occasionally decide to burn the midnight oil, I'm okay with it and not killing myself.
6. Resolution -- due to my sleep deprivation, I put Julie in the direct line of fire of my inability to pull my weight with the kids. Therefore, getting enough sleep also means going to be early enough so that I can wake up with the kids. I am going to be getting up around 6ish each morning of January so that I'm there with the children and so that Julie isn't overburdoned. This morning, julie let me sleep in until 8am. Thank you honey.
7. Resolution -- Time to lose the weight I put on in 2005. the number hit 250 in Nov/Dec, which is red flashing lights defcon 5 emergency. I have to lose at least 30 lbs in 2006, but hopefully more. Time to break out the palm and start counting points again. No more vacation eating, I mean it! (anybody want a peanut?)

...that should do it for now. There are other epiphanies to report on, other things to promise to myself, but for now, I must go get that sleep I need, since I'm gonna be up at 6am to help get everything set for the housecleaners and to get the kids out the door so I can scoot into work on time.