Good-bye Loiosh

Loiosh, our 17 and a half year-old Norwegian Forest Cat, died peacefully at home this morning after good-bye pets and loves.

She was diagnosed with diabetes last week, but her condition did not improve with the administration of insulin. She stopped eating--not even succumbing to the temptations of succulent tuna and kitten food--and drinking, and we let her go on her own terms.

She was the oldest member of our pet family--she was with Dave for four years before we married. She went from a quiet, peaceful life to Dave to the chaos of me, a dog, two screaming birds, five ferrets, two more dogs, a child, and another dog, and she did it with calmness and serenity. She was loved, and she is missed.

A Full Life

The weekend has been too busy to post--out of town guests, sick cat, friends for dinner (not literally!), and full days in the studio to boot. I really will put up the movies from Montana, just not today. Really, really.

In Love

It is getting harder and harder to pretend that these movies have anything to do with Glass Incarnate so I'm going to start posting them here. And next week--when we are actually staying in the cabin at the lake and not staying at my parents' house (who have DSL)--I won't be able to post at all (much less post movies).

So today was another perfect day in paradise (well, except for all the six year-old and 80 year-old whining). It was quite windy both at my parents' and at the lake, and J got cold so we came home at 5:00 instead of 7:00 (the sun goes down about 10:00 here in the summer).

Thank you again to George Winston--whose music has always inspired me and made me think of Montana--for the soundtrack song, "Cradle" from Forest.

Montana!

Today I am no longer Stranded in the South, far from Montana and a Missoula state of mind (though I am wrapping my mind more and more around a Georgia state of mind--at least for the gardening and friends...). We landed in Missoula just before noon, and now we are up in Polson looking out over Flathead Lake. Jessie is settling right in and tormenting my parents' dog Jig. Of course Jig--the same age as Jessie in dog years--can hold his own. He is the talkingest dog I have ever seen. I only captured a snippet, but he is not at all shy about sharing a piece of his mind with you.

July 5th--Montana Tomorrow!

In honor of the Saturday after the 4th of July--a very family-oriented time for me--I am posting two videos of the J. One was taken yesterday at a 4th of July picnic at friends' house and you can tell who's in the video mostly by the cheering in the background. The little itty bitty speck in the back of the yard is J riding a 2-wheeled bike unassisted for the first time. It was a great (distant, brief) moment. The second video is past of the show she did a week or so ago that I hadn't put up yet. Our child is a a monkey.



Look forward to lots of videos from Montana over the next couple of weeks. (Really.)

Jessie and the Missing Teeth

It's Saturday and the posts are flowing. This Flip Video camera is an amazing thing. Here 's the latest from Jessie:



These are mostly for the grandparents, but this one is pretty funny.

Life Options

My first job in high school was working in a laundromat next to the school a few afternoons and evenings a week. After that I started a career in the food service industry that lasted till I graduated from college. I even took a few years off after my first year of college and waitressed, cocktail waitressed and bartended full time. My last job waitressing ended in 1987 when I headed off to graduate school. But in later years when money got tight, and my financial situation would look precarious, I always knew that I had the safety net of being able to get a job waiting tables and I could support myself. Last night I got to test the strength of that net and the result was nothing short of exhilarating.

Last night, after a mediocre, unfulfilling day in the studio for me (I didn't get done what I planned/needed to get done, it was hot, I was tired and crabby), a frustrating, tedious day at work for my spouse, and an unsatisfying day at Circus Camp for the J, the family decided to head off to our favorite little local restaurant for a comfort dinner and a bottle of wine for Dave and me. We got there just before 7:00 and there was a table of 16 partying women on the patio, a couple of tables with two people each on the deck, and another couple at a table inside. We sat down and within ten minutes there were three more tables of two, three or four people who had arrived.

The owner and one waitress were the only front room staff on as they have been really slow for the summer and weren't expecting anything different last night. They were already getting a bit frazzled with no hostess or bartender as back-up when the waitress had an emergency and had to leave at 7:30. By then there were nine tables--one the increasingly raucous large group of women. It was a beautiful, cool night and the thirsty and hungry neighbors were coming out in droves. When the waitress brought us our dinner and said she had to go, I asked the owner if there was anything I could do to help. At first she demurred, but when pressed, she said I could take out an order for three to the deck when it came up.

I took that order out, seated and set up more tables, got water, took drink orders, opened wine, and got drinks, took orders and served food. I was just going to help for a little while, but they were really slammed. Dave took Jessie home when they were done eating and got her to bed, and I stayed on. When things finally settled down and I took stock, it was 11:00! By the end I had learned the entire computer system and entered orders, processed credit cards, and closed out tables. It truly was exhilarating. I really, really enjoyed myself. I had a great time talking to people, bringing them good food and drink so they could have a good evening and a good dining experience in a great atmosphere.

Sure, it was a little chaotic and maybe a bit less smooth for them than it would have been with a professional waitress. But I know the menu, I am familiar with a lot of the wine on the list, and I could confidently recommend items. And the memory for orders and the ability to carry lots of plates and glasses came right back. It was far easier to slip back into waitressing after a 20-year hiatus than it would be to downhill ski again (same approximate hiatus). I reveled in the economy of movement necessary to do it well (combine as many things as you can into every trip from the kitchen/bar to the floor in both directions, and never have empty hands).

At the end of it all I hope that my friend and her restaurant benefited from my help, and that the customers who were there had a positive dining experience, because I sure had a wonderful time. It was *just* what I needed to perk me out of the doldrums, and I wouldn't mind helping out again. Last night I worked for a bottle of wine, maybe next time I'll work for tips!

(Photos courtesy of Dave and his Blackberry)

First Feature Film: Circus Camp!

At the end of a week at Circus Camp, the little campers put on a show. This week's theme was Alice in Wonderland (the kids with the pink balloons on their heads are the white rabbits, the big blue hoop is the rabbit hole to Wonderland). After the little Alices go through the hoop to Wonderland, the story devolves. This movie is MUCH better in a bigger format--320X420 (standard web size) makes all the little people look even more itty bitty. But if you have a spare 11 minutes, enjoy!

Copperhead Snakes

An average of seventy people a day have been visiting Stranded in the South for the past few weeks. I finally figured out why. Apparently lots of people are searching Google for information on copperhead snakes. For quite awhile, on the Google results page the rightmost photo of the three photos at the top was from my post Bamboo, Five Toads and a Snake. I expect traffic to die down now that the same search (appropriately) goes to the Copperhead Snake site (from whence I got the original photo and neglected to credit it--sorry Copperhead Snake people). I expect traffic will go back to the normal crawl now.

Circus Camp...

Bill asked what Circus Camp is on Glass Incarnate earlier today. Well, this is what Jessie learned today in the magic lessons at circus camp...

Happy Birthday to Me

I love our cake plate...



This video thing is kind of like a train wreck. I really want to stop myself and look away (as I'm sure you do too), but it's just too horrific.

This Could Get Tiresome...

Tried out the camera and the pool (we have joined the Redneck Revolution) some more today. This post (and the videos) are aimed straight at the grandparents--and they may be too Leave It To Beaver even for them...

Technology At The Speed of Light

Not too long ago this morning I finished the post about my birthday celebration at the aquarium (see below). Since then I opened my presents, and put together and used the one from my spouse--a piece of technology, of course. But it's not just any piece of technology. It's the blogger's wet dream, a Flip Video--a video camera that looks like your first Barbie camera (mine's pink, like the one in the picture) and is about as easy to use. You put in the AA batteries, you turn it on, you point, you shoot, you flip open the USB adapter, plug the camera ino the computer, and, Voila!

I kid you not, the instructions are about two lines long, and it just... works. Hardware manufacturers who incorporate a software interface have been promising plug and play ease of use for years, but very (VERY) few of them deliver. My first technological oh-my-god-I-can't-believe-how-great-this-is in many years came from the iPhone (Dave's birthday present to me last year) and then I got another big zing from the Amazon Kindle. Now my first foray into the new generation of video technology has raised the bar on what I can do both on Glass Incarnate (video walk-arounds in the studio and at shows, tutorials) and on Stranded in the South (the Jessie video opportunities alone boggle my mind and are going to thrill the grandparents).

So without further ado, here's my first effort:

Happy Birthday... To Me!

Today I reached the celebratory milestone of 47. I don't know why I'm so excited about 47, but I truly am. Is it because I have accepted gravity? (They're going to point south no matter how much I will it otherwise). Is it because my number one goal this year--for the first time in my life--is not to lose weight? (It's to achieve a life/work balance). I don't know why, I just know I'm pretty up with 47.

And the birthday year started off well. In spite of the Phillies 4-2 win over the Braves on Friday night with a crushing final out at home plate, we had a great time at the ballpark--the fireworks were fantastic. It was hot as all get out, and it rained, but getting there, parking, getting out were all surprisingly easy--easy enough that I would like to go to more games and I normally would do anything to avoid the crush of that much humanity.

We continued the party last night at the Georgia Aquarium where we spent the night sleeping with the fishes. I didn't have my laptop or I would probably have blogged the night. As it was, Dave had his Blackberry and updated Facebook with enviable frequency (as seen at left).

The night at the aquarium begins at 3:00 pm with dinner at the Aquarium Cafe--you arrive and eat dinner on your own with vouchers they provide. At 5:15 everyone spending the night (there were 230 of us last night with about 200 between the ages of 6 and 11) gathers and breaks into groups for fun (and educational) presentations, experiments and behind the scenes tours. I was most excited to see the education area of the museum--not something ordinary visitors get to see--it's for school groups--and the top of the Ocean Voyager area (the 6.3 million gallon aquarium exhibit--shown at right).

At 10:00 pm we found out where we were going to sleep, and our group of 24 people (all families) lucked out and was assigned the tunnel under the Ocean Voyager (all of us settling on our mats shown at left). It has a 6.25 inch thick acrylic dome above so you can lay and watch the fish--including the four whale sharks (one of which is shown below)--swim over you all night.

For any of you who have visited the aquarium here the tunnel is the long area with the moving walkway and one of my two favorite spots at the aquarium (the other being in the Ocean Voyager room in front of the ginormous 2 foot thick acrylic window/wall). The tunnel--except for being a main corridor with emergency lighting on all night--is probably the best place to sleep as there isn't a bad mat--everyone gets a perfect window view.

Our sleeping companions were Fred, the potato grouper (shown at right), a hammerhead and several other sharks, fish uncounted, and schools of rays (shown to the best of my limited photographing ability below). I was hoping there was a cool name for a group of rays like rhinoceros get to congregate in a stubbornness and ravens get together in an unkindness, but apparently rays just school like most of the other fish. Dave thinks they should be called a beam of rays, I think he might be on to something. Herring get to be an army, and barracuda get to be a battery. Poor rays.

The best part of the sleepover for me though was the Starbucks coffee and big dispenser of half 'n' half they had waiting for us this morning at 6:00 when they rousted us from our mats. Oy. I didn't expect to spend the 47th anniversary of my birth sleeping on a floor with 23 other people, but I wouldn't have exchanged it with anything. A couple of hours of sleep when we got home at 7:00, and I am right as rain!

More Neighborhood Joy

Noon yesterday at our neighborhood grocery store (where we do all our shopping...):

FBI Press Release
Atlanta Field Office
Gregory Jones, Special Agent in Charge

2635 Century Parkway Suite 400
Contact: SA Stephen Emmett
Atlanta, GA 30345 Desk: (404) 679-6451
(404) 679-9000 Cell: (404) 392-2506

For Immediate Release
May 21, 2008

Atlanta - Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Gregory Jones, FBI Atlanta, requests the assistance of the public with regard to today's armed bank robbery which occurred at the Suntrust bank, located inside of a Publix grocery store, at 2235 Glenwood Avenue, Atlanta, Georgia.

At approximately 11:50 a.m. today, 05/21/08, a lone black male entered the above bank and, after approaching the teller counter, brandished a black revolver type handgun, and then presented the teller with a note demanding money. He departed the bank without further incident, having obtained an undisclosed amount of money. He was observed departing the area on a red bicycle.

The robber is described as being a black male, 28-35 years of age, 5'9'-6'0" in height, 175-180 lbs ., wearing a tan or beige wave cap/"do rag" on his head, a beige or tan long sleeve jacket, and had a white/tan towel around his neck.

Anyone with information regarding the above robbery should contact the Atlanta office FBI at tel. (404) 679-9000.

I Want Another Child

Me: I want to get a two-year old.
Dave: You can rent one.
Me: No, I want my own.
Dave: They smell and they yell. The whole newly unfolding consciousness thing... I'm all about sense of wonder, but they smell and they yell... a lot.
Me: I have to go post now.

Brenda, Dave and Jessie Avoid Guantanamo Bay

At last the promised post. We are home, vacation is over. Where were we? We were on the Liberty of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean ship cruising to Puerto Rico, St Maarten and Labadee Haiti--not that we cared about the itinerary. All we wanted was seven days lost on a ship without a care, concern or responsibility--and cruising is great for that. Our room steward Wayne made up the beds every morning and turned them down every night--leaving chocolates and towel animals in his wake much to J's delight.

We had planned not to get off the ship at all, but they moved the Adventure Ocean camp (5-7 year-olds) to Labadee Haiti for the day we were moored there. J would have driven us stark, staring mad with nothing to do all day (all the rest of the kids having gone ashore) so we went to Haiti to the beach. Royal Caribbean International told us we went to an island off the coast of Haiti, but from the map it's apparent it was a peninsula, not an island. However the closest Haitians come to it is working in the straw market there. The view from our cabin, with a stretch, was towards Guantanamo, Cuba--hence the post title. The photo at right is J coming down the water slide on the beach in Haiti--she's the little tiny speck at the top. Wheeee!

While the goal of the vacation for Dave and me was downtime, J is not so down with the downtime. So I picked a ship that was a bit bigger and had a bit more to offer in the amenities department than the one we took last year. In all, I am not sure it was a good choice, but it may just be that we missed Bill, Bridget and Tom--our companions from last year. 'More amenities' did not translate into 'did more' for me. True, there was ice-skating in the rink on deck three--we didn't participate but we did catch the Russian skaters in their ice show spectacular. And there was surfing on deck eleven on the Flowrider--none of us did that either as J is so light she would have been swept right off the back and Dave and I just weren't exhibitionistic (or coordinated) enough.

We did meet nice people at our dinner table the third night into the cruise. The first night we stayed in our room exhausted after the three-hour grueling check-in on top of four hours of travel and the second night we were the only three people seated at a table for eight--we moved for the third and subsequent nights. The man in the photo at left is Dick, one of our tres cool dinner companions in his suit and shades on one of the formal nights.

The H2O Zone water area on the ship was a good place to frolic and cool off on the hot days (thanks to Avinash Kaushik who took the same cruise last year for the photo). The sculpture in the water park bears a striking resemblance to the work of Niki de Saint Phalle that we saw in the Atlanta Botanical Gardens a couple of years ago.

One of the highlights of the trip for the J was climbing the rock wall to ring the bell. Her face painted as a tiger from the morning at the Adventure Ocean camp, she geared up and attacked the wall. Her fierce determination got her about halfway up before the step spacings were just too great to go on by herself. Luckily her spotter gave her a little pull and got her up to a level where she could continue on and with a mighty reach she grabbed the bell cord and rang it for all she was worth. There were also a few rounds of father-daughter mini golf in the late afternoons while I snoozed. Bliss.

I read between six and eight books, and I didn't work at all for the entire week--I barely checked email twice (though Stacy will say I worried inordinately as I called home twice to check on the studio and the house after our break-in the week before the trip). Worst part of the week was the sunburn I got on the first day out that kept me out of the sun for the rest of the cruise--I peel in a constant little blizzard of flakes even as I write. I slept, read, cuddled with my family, slept, read, and cuddled for a whole week. What's not to like about that vacation?

Our Refrigerator is Possessed

Oh the evil that lurks in the heart of our refrigerator! Sunday night I was in Las Vegas getting ready to go out on a date with our friends Keith and Mike (a la the beginning of the Terminator--remember Ginger listening to music through her headphones in the bathroom while putting on make-up?). Well, because of the earphones in my ears and the cell phone being in the other room, I didn't hear it ring when my spouse called in a panic because the refrigerator was showing signs of aggressive sentience (it was making a grinding noise and was really hot--45 degrees in the freezer and warm in the fridge too--like it was trying to work up the energy to walk off). I suppose the solution to not hearing the phone would be to put the music on my iPhone and listen to iTunes through it not through the iPod, but that would be too easy (and I'd have to rely on one battery instead of two... what a lame excuse!).

But back to the fridge. D spent the last three hours of Sunday night cleaning all the spoiled food out of the fridge and the freezer, and bagging and tossing it. Then he went to the studio to get my little studio fridge to use for the Sprout's lunch and the salvageable food. When he entered the studio he found Middle Ground (the medium kiln by the back door) on and resting comfortably at 1250 degrees. He thought it had been on and at that temp since I left for Vegas several days before. Ho boy. It was actually a friend firing a piece that he had put in on Sunday and everything was fine. The friend is just lucky Dave didn't panic and pull the plug before he could reach me. Dave was a bit... frazzled by this additional electronic appliance activity.

So yesterday the repairman comethed. He plugged the fridge back in and... nothing. The fans came on, the compressor started up, it was quieter than it had been since the day we brought it home. I'll give him credit, he didn't even look at me askance. He took it apart and checked to make sure there was nothing that had gotten into the fan and then fallen to the bottom of the housing when it was unplugged. He checked to make sure it was blowing cold air. He did everything but swap out a part... and it quietly hummed away throughout.

He told me to call back if it acted up again. I answered darkly that I wasn't going to put anything in its sinister body until I was sure it was going to keep working, and he drove off. As his van pulled away from the curb, the fridge growled at me. I whipped around and stalked over to it... and it hummed again. I stepped away, and it growled. I kid you not. I approached and it stopped all bad noises, I moved away and it growled. After a couple of minutes of this I called the repairman back almost hysterical. He said to call back on Monday if I wanted to, and to ask for him as the repairman and he would come out and even if he couldn't find anything wrong they would replace it for free (it's not even a year old yet).

I calmed down, thanked him, and said I would let him know. The fridge stopped growling at me, and it has been quietly humming at exactly its programmed temperatures in both freezer and fridge since last night. It's still empty--I'm not that trusting, but it's cold.

Evil fridge.

Blowing the Bunny

I almost blew the bunny today. On an uncharacteristic Sunday, I posted on Glass Incarnate. I congratulated myself as I was blogging that my child is too young to read so it's ok to write about how I filled and hid the eggs, and Dave bought the candy. As is occasionally my wont, when I was finished I started to read a bit out loud to Dave as he and J were making breakfast. I got all the way through how I filled and cannily hid the eggs before his horrified expression alerted me to my extreme faux pas. J does not appear to have heard me, but it was a close thing. Happy Easter, all.

We're All Okay

For the concerned, the tornado in downtown Atlanta and surrounding neighborhoods missed us last night. Yes, we had a bad storm, but no big booms from trees down, and no houses destroyed in our neighborhood. Good thing Dave doesn't have an office with a window at CNN as that building did get hit. Pretty scary stuff, and I didn't even know about it till this morning when the calls and emails started coming in from worried friends and family. Got to get that dead tree next door taken down!