Oh Heck, It's Up To My Neck!

Happy Winter!

Usually the first day of winter in Seattle is just another cold rainy fall-like day. Well not this year! We're in the midst of a series of snow, wind, and ice storms that have paralyzed Seattle. And the weather has been freezing or below, to boot! That's pretty normal for some parts of the U.S., but not here.

Bijou and JoJo have been mostly cooped up inside and are getting antsy. Our usual routine in the mornings (when I don't work) is to go into the backyard for 20 minutes or so to stretch legs and catch up on the smell news by sniffing everything. JoJo also needs to check out her excavated burrow and make sure it's still open. Well this week I've been going out to feed the birds and defrost their bird bath, and JoJo and Bijou come out but don't stay long. They both seem pretty irritated by the snow, although JoJo has dug around in it and eaten some. And JoJo is finally camouflaged!

Here's a short video of JoJo in the snow:


For the rest of the day Bijou sleeps on her bed in front of our heater and JoJo lounges behind the couch or on her pile of blankets in the livingroom. In the two and a half years we've owned JoJo, she's never shown the slightest interest in any of the heaters, but it's been so cold that yesterday evening (while Bijou snoozed in a comforter on the couch) JoJo had a bath and a nap on Bijou's heater bed for 40 minutes! We've never seen her do anything like it before. I guess the house is cold!


The poor birds in the backyard have been cold. I've been pouring hot water in their bath every day, making sure they have food, and defrosting the hummingbird feeder. The Anna's hummingbird overwinters in Seattle, and I have at least two that visit my feeder. I've been very worried about them in this extended cold weather, but today I saw one at my feeder again, and that made me very happy.

The other birds have really been enjoying the warm water in their bird bath:


I've talked to my Mom on the East coast, and they're having snowstorms, too. Well, wherever you are, take a cue from the animals and roast yourself in front of a heater, have a hot bath, and drink sugar water. Merry Squidmas!

Famous Critters

JoJo made it onto Disapproving Rabbits again! Today's DR post is from the photo I posted two postings ago.

A year and a half ago I heard about Mr. Lee, the cat with the cat cam. His site has cool pictures of what exactly he gets up to all day. Now a Seattle (Fremont) cat also has a cat cam! His Flickr set is here.

Stuff Your Face

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today we are going to Stephanie's house for Thanksgiving, and I made this pie:
It's an apple pie with real vanilla bean in it, a cheddar cheese crust, and a glazed and sugared top. It sure looks and smells delicious. I can't wait to eat it!
[Late breaking news: the pie was delicious! Recipe in the comments. -JPQ]

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, her is a video of JoJo gorging on a banana.

Photo Roundup

I've just emptied my camera, and decided to share some photos with you.

JoJo lounges.












JoJo looks imperious.















Bijou and JoJo glare at each other across the no-man's-land of the carpet in Fringe Wars. They both love to nap on the fringe of the rug, and they've each staked out an end. No one ever sleeps on the other's fringe.









JoJo inspects her new Vacation Villa. It has turned out to be not much of a hit.



















Finally, my Indian Rope plant has continued blooming now that I've brought inside. The waxy pink flowers are lovely and smell like chocolate. Mmmm!

Two Cool Things

Cool Thing 1:
OBAMA IS PRESIDENT! I can't get over it! On election night I literally jumped for joy many, many times. I got shivers and my eyes got a little wet. They still do! I just finished reading the entire special edition of the latest Newsweek which reads like a mini-book on all the behind the scenes action from Clinton's, Obama's, and McCain's campaigns. I feel SO proud of my country. There is a little store in Ballard that sells flags, and after the election they had a run on US flags. When asked why, customers said they finally feel proud of their country again. Yeah.

Cool Thing 2:
Google Maps StreetView has come to Seattle! Now you can actually look at our house as if you were standing in the street, not just the satellite view we had before (and still have). The drive-by photos of our house look like they were taken last fall. Michael's car is in the drive, but mine is gone. Have a look at our house by searching for our address! Click on the Street View button, and then click in the blue outlined block we live on. Make sure the little yellow person icon is standing in front of our house (you can drag him). It can be a little confusing to orient to our house if you don't know our neighborhood. The brown Volvo is across the street from us, and our neighbors next door to the right are outside their house doing yard work.
If you know other people in Seattle, look for them, too! One of my friends' houses has their cat sitting in a front window, which is cute.

Fall News

Forgive me Blogger, it has been one month since my last blog-fession. Really, if nothing is going on with me, I don't write about it. Last week was pretty exciting, though.

I've been feeling a little sick, and I was waffling about going out, and the price was high ($25), but I decided to go see Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet after all. I've been a big fan of Abigail over the past 6 months or so. I first started listening to Uncle Earl, and then I got her solo album Song of the Traveling Daughter and loved that, too. Then I read an article about her in Newsweek which talked about her new venture, the Sparrow Quartet. Wow! How cool! Mix up bluegrass, old-timey, classical, and chinese music and you get something amazing. My banjo teacher, Candy, heard the group and didn't really like them, so I went to the website with some trepidation. After listening to all the tunes online, I was hooked! And they were coming to Seattle again! The show at the Tractor Tavern was outstanding. Each musician was well worth the $25. Béla Fleck is famous, and although I hadn't heard of the other two, I gather from the Quartet bios they're well known, too. If you like music, search YouTube for some of their videos and watch these folks play; it's astounding.

Friday night I went to the World Affairs Council second annual Transnational Trivia Challenge Championship with five other librarians. Several years ago I did a similar thing with two other librarians at a Literacy organization's trivia bee. We got booted out in the first round, so I wasn't too optimistic for this one. This Trivia Challenge was run more like bar trivia: teams confer and write their answers on slips of paper which are gathered and scored; at the end everyone's scores are compared. No losing early on in the night! We answered 40 questions on world capitals, national anthems, news, children's book characters from around the world (we got 10 out of 10 on that one!), food, and whatnot. We actually did pretty well with 30 out of 40, and we tied for 3rd place! Woo hoo! There was a tie breaker question that we didn't get, but still, I'm very proud of us. There were 51 teams (we were Dewey, Knowit & Howe), and we did better than 46 of them! We rock. My proudest moment was being the only one to know where a missing condom-mobile had been stolen from: Mexico City! I have to thank BoingBoing, my main daily news source, for that one.

Monday nights I've been going to a String Band class, which I'm loving. A new song every week, learned with 13 other banjoists (an evil number for a wicked instrument) and then played with the whole class of guitars, mandolins, and fiddles combined. The Canote Brothers and Candy Goldman, my banjo teacher, have had this going for years, but I'm only able to do it this Fall due to my work schedule. Bummer.

Michael and I finally saw Cloverfield, and I highly recommend it. What a great movie! A real thrillah.

Otherwise, life has just been turning to Fall around here. The houseplants are snug inside, Bijou is spending all day glued to her toasty butt pad on the bed, and JoJo is upset that it is no longer warm and sunny when I take her outside. I made some tasty Boston baked beans and corn bread, and am snuggled up with warm cider.

Keep warm!

My New Toy!

Monday night I called Michael before I left work to see if I should buy bread on the way home. He said, "Nope, we have bread and milk. And a banjo!" Yippee! A banjo came in the mail for me! I ordered an Enoch Tradesman fretless banjo. It's got a scooped cherry wood neck, flush frets, and a pretty black finish on the fingerboard and pot. The flush frets show me where to put my fingers while still getting the fretless sound; kind of like banjo training wheels.

My old Deering Goodtime banjo is on the left, and my new Enoch banjo is on the right. I now have black and white, yin and yang, good and evil banjos. I will use them only for good! I've ordered a pretty black and yellow strap for it, and I'll need to get the gig bag all decorated up like my other case.

I was a little afraid of the new banjo, wondering if I'd be able to play it. Lo and behold! My fingers pretty much go in the right places! I'm very excited that I don't have to retrain myself too much. One thing I need to do is change my fretting to the point of my finger or the fingernail instead of just the flat pad of my finger. The sound is much crisper that way; otherwise the sound is a little plunky.

When I was agonizing about whether or not to get myself a new banjo, my banjo friend Jeff said I was the only person he knew with only one banjo. So now I'm real banjo player! Counting the four string Michael got me for my birthday two and half years ago (which started me on my banjo journey), I now have three! The old four string hangs on the wall as visual art, since it can no longer participate in audio art.

Well, I better go practice ...

Canoeing around the Arboretum

Today my friends Sabina and Maya and I rented a canoe from the UW Aquatics Center, and we canoed around the Arboretum. It was a beautiful day. I keep thinking this is the last one of summer, and we keep having these days! Thank the gods for friends who like to get outside. We saw ducks and geese and turtles and a Great Blue heron.

I took some footage of the heron stalking. I had my second-string camera with me (in case I dropped it in the water), so it's not so clear.

That's Moi Guy!

There's a nice new blog post out there about Michael's software MoI and his recent trip to the 2008 SIGGRAPH conference.