Thanks, Sandee

Sandy and the Dook City Gang sent me a postcard for Zoé

I was so sorry to read about the loss of your precious fur baby, Zoe. She sounds like a very special and much loved fuzzy.You have a Zoe sized hole in your heart, but don't worry, that piece that's missing is safe in good paws. Try to remember the good times you had and the love shared between you with a smile. She'll never truly be gone, since the memories and her love will be with you always. Don't forget to look up into the night sky to see the new bright star, she'll be the one winking. May she dance forever in your heart.

Honey, Sugar, Witauka, and Popov
Missing, Boris, Taz, Tasha, Jasmine, Valentine and Chelsea


Sandy and the Dook City Gang

Better late...

Showing off the backlight, no flash... (RotK soundtrack rules, btw)


And a look with the flash. Pardon my messy desk.

I've had the iPod since Friday, but haven't bothered to take any pics of it. It seems a bit silly to have it sitting right next to my computer and not listen to the stuff in iTunes, but it's too cool to not use!

I ordered these as replacements for the earbuds Apple ships with them. I don't know of too many people with ears that can accommodate the originals. I got a set of the black Sonys, then discovered they make white ones (in Japan, naturally). Since I had to have the white ones, Tom got the other set. The beauty of having an iPod is having the white headphones, so not only do I get a kick-ass set of earbuds, but people will know I've got an iPod as well.

Speaking of MP3 players, while in Best Buy today, we noticed a couple of peecee users looking for a player. They were in the market for a model that could hold 250 MB of music. And yet for $100 more, they could've gotten an iPod. Tom seems to think these people need to be shown the error of their ways. I'd prefer to let them wallow in their own stupidity. Not very charitable, I know, but having a bunch of web-fingered ingrates using Apple products kinda kills the mystique. Then again, maybe it's just me.

Snow

Well, the events of yesterday didn't put me in much of a mood to post the pics from our first real snow of the season. We got a decent amount, carnage on the roads ensued, and now most of the snow is gone. It's still cold, but not cold enough to do anything with the rain we've been getting.

Anyway, here's some pics of Roscoe playing the snow. It was his first real chance to romp in the white stuff, since he was tethered at the other house.

New sig file

Here's the sig file I'll be using at the sites I moderate.

Zoé

April 2000 ~ Dec. 28, 2003

Zoé, our original zferret girl, has died. I found her this afternoon, in her favorite hammock. It looked like she died in her sleep, so we can only hope she went peacefully. I'm pretty sure she's been sick for the past month or so, but the fact she keep rallying gave me hope. She was a good, playful girl who loved to chase the cat, and held her own against the dog (she's the one that made Roscoe afraid to play with the ferrets). Out of the four, I think Zoé had the sweetest temperament. She's the one who'd always attack Tom, or instigate play fights with the cat.

Here's the piece I wrote about her on the now-dead zferrets.com

Zoé is one of our original ferrets. She's the one we saw at the pet store and knew we had to have. Since she was older than the other ferret kits,we got a discount on her. The only thing was, we had to takeher sister, too. So we did.

We brought Zoé, and her sister, Zima, home with us in July 2002 shortly after we arrived in Boise. Both of them are from Marshall Farms (largest commercial breeder in the U.S.) and were 4 or 5 months old when we got them. The girls proved very curious about their new home.

One day, when we got home from work, we couldn't find the ferrets. The cage was open, but we knew we had closed it. There were ferret droppings in one of the corners. Since we hadn't moved our belongings into the house yet, there was no place for them to hide. Except one. You know that drawer under the oven, the one where you can store your pots and pans? That's where we found them, sleeping and blissfully unaware.

It was some time before we discovered the girls couldn't hear us… it was a sad realization. After doing some research online, we determined the girls suffered from Waardenburg's syndrome. It's a condition that has been brought about through the popularity of breeding dark-eyed white, marked white, panda, and blaze ferrets like the girls. Blaze ferrets, along with those with panda markings, are the two most common breeds to have deafness. Zoé and Zima are typical blazes with a stripe down the middle of the head and ruby red eyes. Now we knew why the girls didn't respond when we shook the treat container, or vacuumed.

But their “condition” hasn't been a hindrance. The girls don't know life any other way, and as a result are quite fearless. Zoé is the resident stunt ferret, wrestling with Tom, taking on Cassie, who outweighs her by 10 pounds, and biting any wayward toes that pass by. She's a sweet, sweet girl. She's named after Zoey, the special needs kitty that belonged to our good friend Charlotte. Zoey, who was our god kitten, died in 1999.

Gifts for geeks

Pixel Blocks are probably the coolest building blocks to come out since LEGOs. They're translucent, they're stackable, they have notches so you can slide them together. They're ideal if you're trying to make pixel art, or very simple designs. I took the opportunity to make Clarus, the Dogcow.



And here's another one, posed on the PowerBook with the pic I used for reference:



And yes, I am getting an iPod. I've kinda wanted one, but couldn't really justify having one, so my wonderful husband decided to give me one for Christmas. There aren't any to be found here, so the hubby has one coming through the local Mac store (not an Apple Store, darn it, but an independent retailer). It's supposed to be here tomorrow.

Of course, there are all kinds of rumors about new iPods at MWSF next month — talk of smaller, cheaper models with colored cases. Supposedly, these more affordable models won't do all the cool stuff the current models do, so I'm not too worried about it.

As a result, I've been spending a lot of time at the iPodlounge , checking out product reviews and browsing the pics in their "iPods Around the World" section. Pretty neat stuff. With any luck, pics of the iPod will appear in this space tomorrow.

Babbling

A bunch of unrelated stuff

My second Christmas in retail was certainly more entertaining than the last. Since I'm no longer in the mall, bound by corporate policy, there's a bit more freedom in ... dealing with customers. This time of year seems to bring out the worst in people. Drivers suck, people get upset when they can't buy what they want. And none of it is their fault.

In two days, I must've gotten 40 calls from people asking about Xboxes and PS2s. The nature of the used game business is such that you don't know what you're getting or when you're going to get it. But for some reason people seem to think that they can just march into our store and grab exactly what they want at the last second. So it's not my problem when some smelly redneck can't find a PS2 for his web-fingered children a week before Christmas. Or that some grandmother doesn't know what the hell kind of game her spoiled grandkids should get. But all in all, the experience is much better than working in the mall.

•••

Saw Return of the King on Wednesday, and it was fabulous. I wasn't completely sold on Fellowship of the Ring (was a bit slow). Two Towers caught our attention (especially after seeing the Extended Edition) and RotK was a fabulous end to a great trio of movies. I would have to say from a filmmaking standpoint, the Lord of the Rings movies edge out Star Wars. Then again, without the trilogy, there would've been no LotR trilogy. Guess that means we can blame them for the Matrix *puke* movies as well.

At least I'm finally reading the books. They read much easier than I remember from when I read The Hobbit in junior high.

•••

Fish update:

Max seems to be a bit better now after eating his cooked pea on Friday. I started feeding him again today, but he didn't eat his pellets right away. I gave him a few flakes and he went right after those. I'm not entirely convinced he's completely well, so he'll get a water change tomorrow.

Um, he's what?

Yeah, fish get that too...

Max is constipated.

That's right. I have a fish that won't poop right. I guess I've been feeding him a bit too much. When they eat too much, they can get stopped up. Another cause is giving them food that's too rich. I know that's not the case, because I've been feeding him the Hikari Betta Bio Gold pellets and the Bettamin flakes. Feeding brine shrimp and worms is a definite cause, but I'm not giving my fish that stuff.

So I'm supposed to feed him part of a peeled cooked pea. That's all he gets for 24 to 48 hours. It's supposed to help clean out his system. I have no problem doing this, other than the fact that getting a single pea will be a pain.

Assuming he eats the pea, nature will run its course and he'll be regular again. If he doesn't eat the pea, he gets a day or two of no food in the hopes whatever he's got stored up will, um, pass. I'll give him a nice clean tank over the weekend too.

Who'd have thought a damn fish would become the most pampered pet in the house?

Dog as art

So I haven't designed my Christmas card or put up decorations yet. I don't know if we'll do cards this year, since I don't think Roscoe will tolerate me decorating him like I did last year. He was a pretty good sport about it, and did provide a great image for last year's card:



But naturally, he was quite shamed after all of the dressing up.


Anyway, unless we get some snow here soon, this is probably as Christmassy as I'll get with this. Or unless I can convince my dog to dress up again.

Home cookin

For safety, some of the sushi were equipped with seat belts.

Taking a page right out of my grandmother's book, I made sushi at home tonight for the first time evar. She taught me how to make the stuff about 10 years ago, but for whatever reason, I decided I needed to make some today.

There really is a lot to making sushi. You have to make the seasoning for the rice, you have to cook the rice, prep your vegetables, cut your nori (toasted seaweed) if needed and clear a space in the kitchen to make the sushi.

I managed to find tuna at the store today... it was frozen and Tom said it tasted pretty good. I'm not a big fan of sashimi, but I did a good job on the cucumber rolls. In addition, I made sunomono (Japanese salad with pickled vegetables) and miso soup (for the second time this week). This time, I got the miso recipe damn near perfect by using equal parts red and white miso (red had a bolder, saltier flavor; white is more mild). I had the cute Japanese dishes all ready. It was time to chow down. As I pulled out the dishes that hold the shoyu (soy sauce) while you dip your sushi, I realized ... no shoyu.

In most Asian households, not having soy sauce is a travesty. I can't think of the last time I haven't had any. But since the move, well, I guess I either threw out the stuff I had before, or it's in a box in one of the sheds that the spiders have taken over. Growing up, soy sauce came out of a 3-gallon Kikkoman drum. It was something you never ran out of. Until tonight. When I decide to make sushi for the first time evar.

Thankfully, there's an Albertson's right down the street, and I was able to get the soy sauce just fine. I guess the only thing I need to do to cap off an evening of Japanese food is to make some tea, have some mochi and play some video games.

Winter time

Getting toward the middle of December now. All of the trees have dropped their leaves (including the 150+ year old elm in the back) and everything looks pretty blah outside. The weather folks are threatening us with snow yet again, but that's not gonna happen here in town. The mountains have gotten a little, but there's still not much worth looking at.

Anyway, this is a photo I took at grandma's in April. I don't think I'll have any flowers like this one, but with any luck, I'll have tons of daffodils — which would be nice, considering I planted nearly 200 bulbs (70 of those were teeny tiny crocus bulbs) and it was a real pain in the ass to get the soil tilled/softened/dug.

A fish!

Being completely impulsive, I had to have a fish after seeing the one mom had. Her fish is staying with the grandparents now, pending her move to the Land of Corn, but after doing research on bettas, I decided to get one.

We've dubbed the betta Max (get it?) and he occupies a 2.5 gallon tank. He needs plants or some other type of decoration in his tank. As fish go, bettas are pretty ... sedentary. He swims much less than other fish I've had, but he sure is pretty. I read that they like to have a mirror placed outside their tanks every now and again so they can "flare" and look all big and mean at their reflection. I'll have to try that with him.

View from the top

A shot from the 28th floor at mom's condo, on one of those rare rainy nights in the Bay Area.