·:[ NotANerd ]:·
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Its always much closer than you think .. I’ve been in constant PT since last October, everytime it seemed like it was getting better, some other symptom would show up.

I finally had an MRI done that shows multiple bulging disks in my neck .. which explains the pain (which has subsided) and the numbness in my hand (I thought it was RSI before) so with a built in excuse not to blog (I could barely type at work some days) I figured I better get up off my duff and try and at least post quarterly.

We finally got the swim spa completed and it looks grand, the landscaping is now done too so all thats left is some of the lighting and some kind of regular water exercise schedule. Hopefully I’ll get the pictures up and organized .. speaking of which I regularly post gallery pictures .. mostly to see how loaded my server can get.

There are only some small things left to do like watering systems and finally to build Mr Tibbs’ new indoor pond. Speaking of water we can barely see into the pond but I think the fish are still in there. In the mean time we’ve been hosting a few pairs of ducks .. they seem to be in great competition for the cracked corn we put out .. we’ve even been naming them. Elena calls the meanest pair “The Clintons”..

Was in (Bellevue) permit hell for the longest time over the holidays, but now the work is finally underway. My sister-in-law passed away this past christmas (colon cancer) but I think the nephew may still continue to visit this summer. It was my granddad’s 90th bday at the same time, there was a large party for him in LA over xmas too.

But why am I really writing now? My friend Mair has a new (old) art display in Brooklyn, and even the smallest amount of advertising can’t hurt (as we’ve found out when we did an interview for our store in a japanese language website) You can see her work at:

http://www.artezn.com/node/865

and if you’re really bored you can piece through the japanese site at

http://www.junglecity.com/today/2008/0208_1.htm

under the Cafe Lento entry. Yeah, its spelled wrong, but the link works, and its been bringing in customers. If you want some real fun, run it through babelfish to see the auto-translation. I had a native speaker translate it for me but it isn’t as fun as automated stuff.

Here’s what babelfish said:

It is inside the lake Hills shopping mall of bell view, the organic coffee & handmade chocolate shop ‘Cafe Lento’. It can enjoy organic from the chocolate and Africa and Central and South America countries which エレナ himself of the manager makes inside the store & the coffee of fair trade. エレナ of the Canadian graduate young time goes to the confectionery school in IT industry long to work, that it is busy, living of the natural group which is warmed among them was started with confectionery chocolate production with bell view. Last year this coffee shop is opened, the business which makes consideration to also detail feel to natural is developed e.g., the paper glass of テイクアウト compost possible ones are used. The majority of the raw materials of the chocolate is when from Switzerland, and the fruit and the like which is used has chosen safe ones which are limited to the Washington product. 1 for 75 cents ‘ Pine Nut of sip size Crunchies ‘ and, トリ…フ which rode in the thin cookie seat (approximately 15 types: 1 $2 - the $3) the male be completed is. It was made from the Bolivian wild cacao, ‘ wild Chocolate ‘ and the カイエン pepper ‘ Spicy Raspberry ‘ of the point is popularity, so. After inquiring about order, also the coffee which at a time you insert all the way with French press is tastiness. テイクアウト of chocolate yes.
509 156th Avenue SE and Bellevue (425) 644-7119 >> Map

and here’s what my friend says it really translates into:

Cafe Lento is a organic coffee and a home made chocolate shop located at Lakehills Shopping Mall in Bellevue. You can enjoy home made chocolate made at the store by the owner, Elena-san and organic & fair trade coffee imported from Africa and Latin America countries. Elena-san is originally from Canada and attended confectionery school when she was young and worked in the IT industry for a long time. She kept the natural living style even through her busy work pace, started her desert and chocolate making with the natual life style in Bellevue. She opened this coffee shop last year and you can feel her caring to the nature in her business through details like takeout cups that can be composted. She also selectively choose most of her chocolate ingredients from Switzerland and fruits that are used in deserts are safe and harvested in Washington states. The recommended items are: one mouth size “Pine Nut Crunchies”$.75 each, Truffle on thin cookie sheet (about 15 kinds, $2~$3 each). Other pupular items are: “Wild Chocolate” made from wide cacao in Bolivia and “Spicy Rasberry” with cayen pepper. The coffee made with a french press after each order is exquite. You can also take out chocolates.

who knows what will show up…

The digging for the swim spa is mostly complete .. now we’re just waiting for the
construction permits … in the mean time an employee at our vet (Dr Kamaka, highly recommended, Eastside Avian and Exotic Medical Center) asked if we would want to adopt some fish that her mom had raised in an outdoor pond .. since we have plenty of room we now have a large Koi (about 12″, no name yet), a smaller deformed koi named Bubbles, a large white goldfish (name tbd) that is the same size as (great) Scot, and a very, very large catfish that we named Dimitry (we haven’t quite settled on the spelling yet).

So far so good, everyone seems to get along .. then it started raining and filling in some of the post holes in the swim spa area .. and what do I find out there (stuck in the hole) but a rather large (4″ or so) frog and a tiny (3″ but skinny) salamander .. I dumped them in the pond too but we haven’t seen them since. Strange though, we can’t figure out where the frog came from .. either the ducks brought some eggs by mistake or it hopped up the easement to the house from the lake that is over a block away. Maybe Bertha sent him to keep us company.

Speaking of ducks .. for some reason they’re not quite migrating yet, they’re not as friendly (or demanding) as before but there are a huge number of them now (up to 16 at one time) many of them look like adolescents and they’re a bit skittish, they’re going through the cracked corn at a high rate, good thing that its relatively inexpensive at Home Depot.

Snow snakes will often snag skiers, Grass and Sand snakes will do their best to embarrass volleyball players .. So far I’ve survived most of those encounters .. but a week or so ago I ran into the very rare (hard) Wood snake .. which caused a head first collision with a wall. Luckily I’m well padded.. well at least most of the soft parts are, I just had a minor case of neck strain, small bruise on the head and this odd wrist soreness.

Never let them talk you into “just one more game”.

Things are settling down now that the house guests are gone .. just in time to start all of the swim spa (and landscaping) demolition work… now if I could only get the permits approved I could be rehabbing all of my injuries at home by Christmas.

Mr Tibbs has been home for a week .. she’s on a limited water visitation. That means most of the time she spends in a dry hospital tub and then just daily visits into a wet tub for food and hopefully poop. She is water proof, but its only been in the last couple of days that she’s actually been eating regularly .. however her poop still leaves much to be desired (its kinda clear jelly like, not the normal “bird poop in the water” look we expect).

She does look a bit better and has been spending more time basking instead of tucked in her shell. I expect that she can go back to water full time in a few weeks, in the interim we’re working on a new indoor pond (160 gallons) for the sunroom just for her.

The house is quiet now after all the visitors (sister-in-law, nephew etc) just in time to start the digging for the swim spa, hopefully that will get finished this year so we can start the new landscape plan shortly.

We also have some new denizens in the pond .. Ghost Fish, Sparky and Esteban .. new koi that we picked up at the annual koi show. The first day in the pond (Great) Scott was chasing Sparky (named such because its the only one with the sparkly scales .. yeah one day I’ll learn the actual type of koi name) anyway it was back and forth across the pond .. its a good thing that they don’t really have teeth .. anyway after a day or so they were best of pals .. swimming like a pair. Lately we’ve started seeing the other two and the swimming pairs seem to vary.

The ducks have also returned .. they swing by to eat (there appear to be about 4 pairs) early and late but don’t hang out near as long (nor beg at the door) like they used to.

I also jammed my hip playing bball so now its no sports for a while .. as long as its not a “Bo Jackson” I’m not too concerned.

I am however concerned about one of my friends (Paula) who is in the hospital recovering from brain surgery .. it was looking pretty dicey last week but she seems to be partially awake and seems to “be in there” it’ll be slow going but it looks promising now (everything moves) and everyone seems to be at least exhaling a bit. Its a good thing she’s a stubborn one

Hopefully Mr Tibbs can be put back together again …

We re-released her into the pond this past weekend, and she seemed very happy, but then the weather started turning into Seattle summer (60 degrees and raining hard) normally not such a big deal but its the same kind of weather when Bertha disappeared.

This past Wed had already started out badly, I heard that morning that my friends mom had passed away from cancer, then at 1pm I get an emergency text message from Elena to get home because Mr Tibbs had been mauled. My sister-in-law who was visiting found her, and when I got home everyone was in tears. It was more than a mauling, she’d been run over by a car on our long (shared) driveway. We suspect (due to the marks on the shell) that a dog might have been “playing” with her .. whether or not the dog found her in the driveway or in our yard is up to some debate.

She looked horrible and Elena was calling local vets about euthenasia .. luckily I preferred to take her up to our regular vet (Dr Kamaka, http://www.eaeamc.com/) where we found out that while it was bad, Mr Tibbs might survive.

Currently she’s in the hospital with her shell cracks set, if everything goes well then today Dr Kamaka will sew up the tissue damage and then see about sealing the cracks for healing (the carpace of turtles is actually like living bone) then it’ll be more than a few months of water free care.

Mr Tibbs will then become an indoor only turtle .. so we’ll have to build a rather large indoor pond in our sun room. If she survives this she’s one tough turtle …

that our pond is…. Not only do we have our own TED (turtle exclusion device) so that Mr. Tibbs can safely wander without investigating the pond skimmer, we now have Scot .. a rather large (6-8″ ?? and about 4″ high/wide) goldfish. Both were re-released into the pond this past week.

I think Scot (one t or two? maybe he’ll tell us) must be part salmon ..he spent a good deal of time trying to swim/jump up the main water fall. Mr Tibbs of course is just cruising the depths, we don’t see her much at all.

Oh and now that there are some large beasts in the pond, the rest of the feeder goldfish seem to have formed some kind of self defense league. Even though they’re getting bigger, maybe on the order of 2″ long and a half inch thick, they’re no match for the behemoths of the deep, so they’ve taken to schooling in groups from 20-30 .. and they’re staying much closer to the surface .. probably not the best choice if a heron wanders by. Anyway I’ve seen about 3 or 4 schools in different parts of the pond. Maybe some will get as big as Scott .. or will just become followers of “Great Scott” the golden whale.

Sister-in-law and groupies have been in town for the week so lots of eating out.. we get just a week or so break before the nephew shows up. Apparently he got a part in some tv show but we’ll have to find out when it airs.

Was out of town for most of July … TTBNL is now known as “Mr Tibbs” even though she is female, she spent most of July with the vet while I was out of town but is now eating like a champ and will be re-released into the pond soon. We did manage to take up a bunch of decking to see if Rocky was hiding under there but s/he wasn’t so we just screened off everything. Oh and I now have a pond “TED” of sorts to discourage Mr Tibbs from investigating the skimmer any more.

The deer hasn’t been back, and now the ducks have disappeared and soon we have relatives visiting so we’ll be out and about for the rest of August. Hopefully the swim spa work will start soon .. and our yard actually grew a bit .. we had a survey done and we can take out some of the hedging to recapture about 4′ of width where we want the swim spa.

MotoGP at Laguna Seca was pretty darn fun .. even though my ankle was toasted and I ended up not walking much. I had a recheck and modifications to my orthodics so things seem better now .. back to basketball and vball soon. Next year will be a couple of trips since MotoGP is now going to Indy .. the brickyard should be fun but we’re not convinced that there is anything else to do over there at all. Pictures should be up on the gallery soon.

Managed to screen the deck so no more Rocky .. but the other Sunday Gilbert was making very strange noises at the window, not the normal “beware of flying things” or even the “get out of my yard” screech .. so when I went to look what did I see but a black tailed deer with small velvety horns. It wandered around the yard and was just about to snack on the left over cracked corn until a duck flew in to chase him away. He just wander around the property for a bit (Elena saw him in the front yard) and then was gone. He made a return appearance that evening but we haven’t seen him in a week or so. I’m thinking he was attracted by the waterfall sound and he really didn’t seem too concerned that we were moving around in the house I’m sure he could see us through the window.

I did get a few pictures but probably won’t get them up online until I’m back from Laguna Seca .. when the mass motogp upload starts on the gallery.

Still no sign of Bertha, Mr Tibbs seems better but we’ll keep her in the hospital tank (at the vet) until I get back and we’re sure she can be re-released into the pond. The feeder goldfish are getting rather large now, but the pond is still greenish so I’ll definitely be adding more plants soon.

Seems like all the pests’ names start with R .. and of course with Bertha still missing and now Mr Tibbs in the hospital tub (w/ antibiotics daily) there is, of course, no real targets in our pond other than the feeder goldfish but apparently that may be enough as the raccoon I chased off the other night appeared again .. and this time disappeared under the deck and wouldn’t come out. I waited too long to seal it up and now I’ll have to take up deck boards to chase him out. I suspect he’s actually hiding out in the cavity under the hot tub (nice and warm there) hopefully he’s just exploring and not a nesting mom. I’m really hoping I don’t see Bertha’s remains under there.

Mr Tibbs had just abrasions and “puffy eyes” so they sent her home with liquid antibiotics (10 days worth) and the vet administered an ointment to her eyes. I’ll have to be pretty careful since her beak is pretty sharp and she easily cut the cotton swab in half. She now gets a pampered stay in the sun room, safe from Rocky with a nice heat lamp.

Nothing but water woes today. Elena comes home and eventually notices that one of our hoses has burst outside and we have quite the mud pit. Then after dinner when we get home I notice that the falls are running at about 10% of capacity or so .. but the pump is running.

I figured it was just crud in the intake but when I turn it off and stick my hand down there what do I find but a small turtle shell wedged in front. She (yes it really is a her named Mr Tibbs) seems kinda beat up so we put her in a hospital tub and left a light on for her. She’s moving a bit but not quite spry. I’m hoping that the vet can see us in the morning to check her out.

Its strange, this is a skimmer setup with a net skimmer on the intake above the pump so the only thing we can figure is that she was climbing on the rocks above and either fell in or thought it was a nice cave. We had left the top off while we diagnose some of the leaks and the measuring stick across the front intake was getting in the way of the top. We’ll have to fit a couple of bars across the intake and leave the cover on the skimmer from now on.

It was getting warmer and it seemed like the turtles were getting used to the pond. Bertha was basking most days and would take earthworms from my hand.

However we haven’t seen Bertha in over a week .. the last time I saw her she was a bit further away from the pond than normal (about 6′ up the hill) and then she scuttled back into the pond .. probably the fastest I’ve ever seen her move. That was Monday over a week ago and we haven’t seen her since. Seattle weather being what it is was so spotty that there really wasn’t much basking weather so it wouldn’t be too unusual if she wasn’t out.

Hopefully she didn’t heard the “call of the wild” from male turtles in nearby Phantom Lake (about 3 blocks with plenty of wildlife egress) or perhaps she needed to burrow a nest to drop some eggs. But its always possible that a raccoon got her (or injured her) especially since I found one “fishing” a bit and exploring under the deck this past week. My vet thinks that maybe the funky weather kicked her into hibernation mode and said not to worry until its been hot for a while (like July) but today we saw the TTBNL (Elena calls her Mr Tibbs) sunning for a bit but they don’t necessarily have to have the same hibernation instincts due to their age and size difference.

On other news the landscape plan is in work and we got our AC unit in place although we’ll have to move it when we get the swim spa in this fall. Oh and Daryl’s finally making a visit to the area so the gang will be busy for a weekend.

Well, it appears that our pond is now turtle friendly .. I picked up Bertha (an 8-10″ female) and TTBNL (Turtle To Be Named Later, 5″ or so .. the vet calls her Bob) They’re both Red-Eared Sliders (RES), not native, but common. I did want native turtles but unfortunately they’re slightly endangered (and illegal to own) and the local zoo (Woodland Park Zoo) curator said to make sure they don’t escape and recommended a turtle rescue.

So far its been 2 days and they’re staying put. Bertha is very friendly and lets us hand place her on the step stones to bask. TTBNL is very skittish and I’m lucky if I see her swimming just to verify that she’s still in the pond. There will be pictures in the Gallery when I get a chance. I think they’re eating but its hard to tell .. the water plants and the lettuce seem to be a bit disturbed but then again it could be the ducks (Mr & Mrs Mallard)

Speaking of the ducks .. two little known facts, while the species pages say that they’re primarily herbivores, apparently during breeding season they’ll basically eat anything they can swallow .. including the 1st 500 goldfish we seeded into the pond. Thats right, 500 1-2″ feeder goldfish went missing about 4 hrs after I put them in. Elena said for some reason the ducks were acting pretty happy .. go figure. The next week I threw another 500 in, but this time I stayed around (and the ducks stayed away) so I think more survived, in any case we recently saw around 30 of them in the rock crevices. But since young RES are carnivorous I’m not expecting them to last very long.

The other disconcerting piece is that we often seen a single male, or sometimes the pair in the pond .. we thought it was the male of the pair but it wasn’t since it chased and then attempted to assault the female mallard when she arrived. Good thing Mr Mallard showed up since he then chased away the offender. I asked the vet and she said its surprising but that mallards are one of the species where this will occur. Needless to say we’re trying to avoid feeding the rapist but you can’t tell which male it is unless the female is there.

Finally just to show you how weird nature is in general .. check out the Gamera like organ on normal sized turtles from the Tetrapod Zoolology Blog good thing ours are both female.

We’re in the closing stages of pond/waterfall project .. just a small leak or two to find, but it spring and time to start populating the waters. The plan was to set the water chemistry with around 500 feeder goldfish, stick some plants in, and add some bacteria to get things going. We might even get to that this week.

In the mean time I’ve been researching adopting a turtle or two .. turns out there are only 2 or 3 native species in our area.. and its actually illegal to own them (well unless you have “captive bred” paperwork) not to mention that one of them (the Western Pond Turtle) is endangered and very scarce. In any case we’ll probably get a re-homed Red Eared Slider (RES) .. basically the popular pet shop turtle with red ear patches. They seem to live well in the area and since we’re about 3 blocks from the lake they should stick around our pond.

While planning all of this it appears that a pair of migratory mallards have found our pond .. they don’t seem to mind that there isn’t any fish or water plants yet, they just scrub around for the fallen birdseed. They seem to sleep somewhere else though since they always fly off at dusk. The first couple of days they were exploring the yard together .. but lately we’re only seeing one at a time in the area. We may name them, but Elena’s worried that a predator might take one. More interesting will be if they nest in the yard .. seems kinda unlikely with all the other lakes around but you never know. We think they’re “semi-tame” because the neighbor across the street used to have a returning pair of ducks that hung out in his yard, I think they like our pond better.

The internet is wonderful .. when you want to find out about something from the past, chances are someone else was interested before and theres at least one reference. The hard part is if its something that was discontinued and you’re really craving it.

Horlicks Malted Milk Tablets is one such item for me .. the powder form (like Ovaltine) is still available but I haven’t seen any of the tablets since the mid-80’s in chinatown shops (imported versions) and they haven’t been widely available in the US stores since the 70’s.

About every two years or so I do a search hoping that someone restarted production or importation of them .. and finally a week ago I found them at: Spiced.com the packaging is different, and Glaxo-Smith-Kline (GSK) seems to have renamed them “Malties” but they taste just about the same (I think they’re slightly softer or my jaws are slightly stronger in any case spiced.com is one of a few places I found that now carry them but their pricing seems the best .. leave it to a Hawaiian company to import an unusual food product.

Yumm I may OD on the malt soon…

Last time that I woke up in the middle of the night from pain it was my appendix, after about a month of indigestion and antacids. This time I know better. Since I’ve already had my appendix out (and it was on the other side) the ER folks (3:30am) were betting on kidney stones.

First they gave me the same cocktail that Elena gets for her migraines, only in IM instead of IV. That’d be Compazine, Dilotted and Toradal .. then it was off to X-Rays and a CT scan. Unfortunately they couldn’t find anything so they think that either it was too small to see, or I might have already passed it.

They tried to send me home with some Percocet (oxycodone but wasn’t done throwing up my dinner from the previous night. So it was some other anti-nausea med .. which proceeded to make me barf some more. I finally got home around 8am and slept the whole day (slight dinner at 5:30) the pain did subside some so I only needed one percocet the whole weekend and feel mostly tired and slightly sore.

Weird thing is that with all the pain killers in my system you’d think I’d be feeling pretty good, or at least numb .. but oddly all of my other sports injuries are flaring up, the sore ankle, the neck and my left wrist.

The one thing this incident does explain is why my BP was so elevated this past week, almost like my meds weren’t working at all, hopefully that was just a low-grade pain symptom. The other thing that I found out is that with that pain level, at rest in the ER, my O2 saturation was dropping down into the 90% range .. pretty low, they actually had to put me on an oxygen feed .. and since I already have a CPAP machine for my sleep apnea I think I’ll be making an appointment with an ENT to see about what else we can do to improve my breathing, both awake and asleep. I suspect its some type of allergy (mold?) but it may be time to work on that deviated septim.

you can go draw your own at:

http://roxik.com/pictaps/index.html

Alessandro (Alex) Matteo Anzalone

Caffe Lento is having a very soft opening while they test coffee/pastry recipes on the willing … if you’re in the Bellevue WA area stop on by (509 156th Ave SE, Lake Hills Shopping Mall, Bellevue WA 98008) There might even be chocolates there.

yuck, first the floods, then the snow, wind and now its snowed again (twice !!) last week it took me 3 hrs to get home .. its normally a 15 minute (no freeway) drive .. but everyone was in a tizzy about the snow. It made me miss my sonics game (and the return of Gary Payton). Then the 3 day freeze that followed wasn’t very nice either .. main roads were clear but all of the side roads were very hazardous.

Just as everything was clearing up it snowed again last night and (for once) I had to be in the office early (8am ugh) fresh snow is actually easier to drive on than ice, but I had to route around all of the hills as they weren’t cleared yet. Still it was only a slow (30 minute) drive on empty roads since everyone appears to have slept in.

This is wrecking havoc with my deck/spa/hardscape contractors .. the grounds too hard to dig, the snow is in the way and they might not be able to get in/out of our driveway ..

I did start putting more pictures in the gallery .. in fact I tried taking some night snow pics but lots of them were pretty bad.. since storage isn’t an issue I just put them all up while I look for some ones that might be worth working on.

Your results:
You are Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom 85% Apocalypse 78% Lex Luthor 72% Magneto 69% Riddler 65% Mr. Freeze 57% Juggernaut 57% The Joker 56% Venom 49% Kingpin 48% Dark Phoenix 47% Catwoman 42% Poison Ivy 40% Green Goblin 37% Mystique 37% Two-Face 25%

Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

Your results:
You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern 95% Hulk 70% The Flash 70% Spider-Man 60% Catwoman 60% Superman 60% Supergirl 48% Robin 43% Wonder Woman 43% Batman 40% Iron Man 40%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

First snow, then water and now wind … if you haven’t heard the major windstorm knocked out power in around a million homes. 700K alone for PSE who is my utility vendor. We’ve been out of power since 1am last Thursday night and while power is up now, no one is sure for how long since they’re still making repairs and another storm is expected this weekend. Fortunately we didn’t sustain any structural damage, there was a bunch of large branches that thumped the house pretty good though. When things are more stable I’ll upload pictures of carnage.

While we did have some bit of heat (gas fireplace insert) we’re also below grade so the sewer pump wasn’t working. That plus the birds meant relocation for the duration. Luckily my friend Kat in Ballard/North Beach never lost power so we moved in there for a bit. Coincidentally she had just had her knee scoped so we managed to make ourselves a bit useful, everyone, that is, except for Gilbert who managed to poop on her head and be banned from any further hair surfing on the landlord.

The home stay timing is apropos since we’re due to have all of our windows replaced on Thursday so we may just stay a couple of more days with Kat and let them air the whole house out.

Lastly, today Mt St Helens was technically erupting with large steam plumes .. I’m really hoping fire isn’t next.

Not only was it a bummer month, it rained the whole time too. November was the wettest month ever recorded in the NW. And then after Thanksgiving it snowed .. that was fun, since most of the city stayed barren and all of the outlying areas were snowed in. Needless to say we didn’t get much further on the waterscape. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks we’ll get the liner sprayed and then the deck/spa work can commence.

Thanksgiving itself went pretty well, actually got the living room cleaned up enough to entertain the whole family .. although they spent all their time in the family room taking turns in Elena’s massage chair.

Oh, and as a birthday exercise I tried to order a Wii online for my nephew Max. Turns out that he did go stand in line and got one, so the one that arrived we donated to Ronald McDonald House. I still have to find an extra controller and some games so that when they setup their “Teen Room” more than one person can play. During the early morning shopping I also ended up on a back order list for another Wii .. that one actually shipped out to me today so I may just have to keep this one and see if I can exercise with it a bit

I did get some other shopping done though, now there is a new HD Tivo + digital cable (we may be hooked on “On Demand” especially for Dexter) and a Pioneer Elite VSX-84 receiver. Now I have plenty of inputs to switch between, and to relieve Elena of the hidden remote nightmare I went and got a Logitech Harmony 720 universal remote. Now its just one button and everything starts correctly. All that remains is the $$ for the Pioneer Elite 50″ 1080p plasma monitor and I won’t have to leave home.

December is turning out to be pretty wet and windy too, nothing but mud puddles in the back and the decrepit old arbor fell over. I need to put up a bunch more hooks for the birdfeeders since they appear to be starving out there.

Lastly Cricket is starting to take on the traits of Cracker .. especially the broom attacks, we may rename her Crackit, and now Gilbert has started to figure out he can fly, even with his anti-feather-picking-collar on. Its only a matter of time before he starts dive bombing everyone.

Gee, this was almost long enough to pass for a Christmas letter .. we may have to think about that since we’ve no time for cards this year.

It was a pretty dismal weekend, Cracker had been a bit under the weather and Elena had taken him to the vet this past Thursday. They thought it was stress related or perhaps an infection. We had a bunch of meds for him, and although he was eating well, his energy level was still really low.

Saturday morning he was actually pretty perky, almost back to normal, I spent about 20 minutes with him just playing on the couch, but then he started to have trouble standing and moving. It was horrible on the way to the vet, he just sat in Elena’s hands, wings outstreached looking upwards a bit. At the vet they wanted to take X-Rays to see why the relapse was happening .. but when they took him back he started struggling and had “wet respiration” so they gave him some meds and stuck him in an oxygen tent to try and stablize him. That was pretty bad, he just crouched on the floor of the tent huffing. After a bit they thought they’d try the scan to see what was up, but then there was a problem and they ended up trying to give him cpr unfortunately it didn’t work and he passed away in front of us while they were working on him. Birdy CPR is really kinda disturbing, and especially bad when its your bird.

The necropsy showed that his heart was actually pretty odd, mis-sized, malformed and overly thick walls, add that to the infection (fluids in the abdomen and air sacs) and it was too much for him. The vet ended up diagnosing death due to heart disease.

Cracker was an awesome bird, he was the most cuddly and loving of the birds we have. We couldn’t believe that the original owners hadn’t wanted him, or that they thought he was boring. They fed him poorly, and told us that his genetics weren’t that great (especially the beak) and seemed to neglect him quite a bit. Still after we took him (about 2.5 years ago) he blossomed quickly. He basically became the sub-alpha bird (after me of course) in the house. He spent most of his time out of the cage and really hated it when we were in different rooms. Despite the rivalry with Gilbert, they always called and answered to each other. Lately we had let his wings grow out and he was flying around like a champ. Its just not the same around the house now, no happy greeting, no good night “tch tch tch” and especially no daily “broomstick attack”. I do have some other videos that I might put up on the gilbertgonzo site to go with his odd furby infatuation.

I can’t quite decide if I want to participate in the Progressive Google Bombing or not .. I figure if I at least put the article on my blog its a start .. if you want to read about why try reading: this and no, I won’t approve any google bombs in my comments

weather’s been bad, no work on the muddy pit, although the spa orientation is finally settling out .. looks like a 45 degree angle gives the most viewing opportunities ..

The pictures of the hardscape work are finally up in the gallery .. hopefully the server will stay up.

Hardscape Work

This past weekend the pond turned into a cat trap because two cats were carousing around and tumbled into the pit .. needless to say they were both totally soaked but they managed to get out without any additional help.

This week they should be finishing up the digging, and pumps/piping before having Tim Zuber come by and spray the liner … after that its water testing and waiting for a weather break for the deck/spa installation.

Its exciting .. its really taking shape, and we think we found a landscaper to work with us on the plant design and all of the extra dirt and rocks.

We also ordered new windows for the house .. specifically designed so that the birdies have large picture windows and can have a breeze during the summer without worrying about them flying loose or having screens obscuring their (or our) vision.

The hardscape work has started, theres a backhoe chewing up the lawn while moving all of the rocks out of the way for the spa and waterscape .. its very cool .. good thing we wanted to relandscape afterwards anyway.

I’ll have pictures soon on the gallery .. if the weather holds there will be a large “racoon trap” waiting for the zuber treatment (spray in liner) maybe we’ll even catch the dog that was pooping in the yard, or perhaps the cat that was hunting the birds.

I forgot how much I liked cool weather .. especially the fog, its still pretty mild and hopefully when the hardscape work starts in a couple of weeks it won’t rain too hard. Now that the weather is cooler, the furnace has started kicking in, I’ll have to check and see if the efficiency is really as good as advertised since we didn’t have good numbers from last winter.

This is now indoor sports season, my bball league has started as has Dave’s advanced vball class .. its always good to get training in, although my body’s still going to be sore for a while.

On the tech side, still no webcams, we did get a new printer (hp color laserjet 2605dtn), we mounted up a scarecrow to deter animals (its a motion detecting sprinkler system) and I finally got a new phone (nokia 6131). I racked all of my AV gear in a new entertainment cabinet but I still need to find/buy an HDMI AV receiver .. then I can think about the new plasma screen. The interim LCD TV turns out to have an HD tuner in it and I’ve recently discovered that the local broadcast HD stations are unscrambled, as are discovery and most of the PBS stations … just more temptation/examples to get HD signals and a larger screen.. but at least I don’t have to get that Tivo HD Series 3 yet. I didn’t think that HD sports would be worth the money but I might be changing my mind soon

Started raining, just in time for LeafGuard to come and put new gutters on the house.. I hope to have pictures up this weekend. They did a bang up job, in fact they warned me about the pieces that were problematic because of the age/shape of the house and then came up with some acceptable solutions.

Now if we could just get the hardscape plan in place we’d be ready to rock-n-roll.

Transferred the drivers licenses and registered to vote … unfortunately too late for the local primary .. we’ll probably still get called for jury duty before we get to vote

The weather is cooling (finally) and soon we’ll have the plans for the back, maybe even in time for some kind of open house/house warming shindig .. at least we won’t need AC for a while now.