Category: Personal

Day-to-day life and other ramblings

Wednesday Gaming

With Subrata busy being a new Dad, we haven’t had gaming for a few weeks. So Monday I sent e-mail to the gang offering to host, and tonight Josh, Ziggy and Valerie came by for our first post-baby gaming session. We played a game of Antike which Josh won, followed by a game of Res Publica which Josh and Ziggy tied at.

I realized as I was bringing down Res Publica that these two games are sort of the two halves of Civilization: Antike is the building-cities-and-moving-armies part, while Res Publica is the acquiring-cards-and-trading part. I find the trading to be the most interesting part of the game, so I have a preference for Res Publica; I think I’d like Antike a little more if it featured a little more conflict than it does. (For what it’s worth, I’ve never really cared for Civilization.)

Whump came by later in the evening to say hi since he was heading home after hitting the comic book store. And the cats came down and said hi to people, especially Josh, whom they know has fed them in the past. So a good time was had by all. I might try hosting every other week for a while, barring other commitments.

On the down side, Debbi has been hit with a nasty illness, with a sore throat and a bad cough, and has been laid up for a couple of days. It really sucks, she’s been miserable. (Though she did get a few hours of Roulette lying on her lap, which is a rarity indeed!) Hopefully another good night’s sleep and she’ll be just about back to normal, but unfortunately it might be a couple more days.

Squirrels Gone Wild

Here at Casa del Rawdon we have a nice patio out back with some pretty trees which shade the place in the late afternoon. They’re also home to numerous squirrels – seemingly more every year. We usually see them running on the fences and drinking out of the pond, and occasionally I find that they’ve buried a nut in one of the pots on the upstairs porch.

This year, though, we have Squirrels Gone Wild. More squirrels, chasing each other about, and making more noise than ever before. Sometimes one of them sits on the fence and looks at the house, making chitting noises, and driving poor Blackjack nuts. I suspect one of them also likes to run around on the upstairs porch, as I sometimes wake up to skittering noises and see fascinated kitties looking out the curtains to the porch.

Yesterday the squirrels were running all throughout the trees, and I heard something in one tree making cooing noises. At first I thought the squirrels and found and disturbed a bird nest, as we’ve also had a couple of birds (morning doves, maybe?) hanging around the fence this spring as well. But eventually I decided that it must be squirrel mating season. That’s right, Squirrels In Heat! No wonder they’re so rambunctious lately.

It’s all very amusing until Blackjack gets so worked up that he leaps through the screen door or something, I guess. Actually it’s probably going to be fine unless we end up with progressively more squirrels each year, as the ones we have now seem like plenty to keep everyone entertained. Hopefully this is just a banner year for squirrel production, and things will get back to normal next year.

Otherwise I may have to see if I can interest Animal Planet in filming a new series in our backyard.

A Tale of Two Weekends

The days have been just flying by, lately! I realized this weekend that I never wrote an entry about last weekend, partly because I’d been busy catching up on posting photos from my Dad’s visit!

The bittersweet part of last weekend was going to two Red Sox/Athletics games, which I’d been excited about since this is a rare year in which my Red Sox visited Oakland twice in the same season. Unfortunately, we ended up seeing two games of a three-game sweep by the A’s, with the Sox losing 8-3 on Friday, and then 3-0 on Saturday. The Saturday game was almost very exciting as Justin Duchscherer came two baserunners away from pitching a perfect game. But he hit Jason Varitek leading off the 6th, and David Ortiz singled in the 7th. Huston Street replaced Duchscherer for the 9th, and that was it. Bummer. On television we watched the A’s finish the sweep by winning 6-3 on Sunday. Alas.

On the bright side, the Sox have gone 4-2 since then, and they still have the second-best record in the American League (behind the Rays, who seem to finally be capitalizing on their substantial talent base).

Sunday we also had Subrata and Susan over for the day. We hadn’t heard from them for a few days and we’d figured they might be going stir crazy waiting for their child to arrive. (As I wrote over this past weekend, he arrived last Thursday.) We met at The Counter for lunch and then came back and played Magic (Subrata and me) and dominoes (all four of us) for the afternoon, winding up having dinner at Marie Callender’s.

The Magic session was interesting, my second time really playing Shadowmoor. We played a sealed deck game. Subrata had two viable builds from his cards, while I thought I had three or even four, but part-way through one game I realized I just didn’t have the right mix of stuff to make a white-blue deck work; it kept wanting to be write-green. So I did that instead and it worked quite well, better than the black-red deck did. The red-green version might have worked, too, but I didn’t try that. Anyway, it does feel like Shadowmoor is a slower format than Lorwyn or Time Spiral were. But since I enjoy creature-based decks, that’s not really a bad thing.

This weekend as I said we went to the hospital to visit Subrata, Susan and Ajay on Friday evening. Saturday we went out and did some shopping, including buying a new cat bush (half-height cat tree) for the downstairs. Even though it’s nearly identical to the old one, the cats still had to sniff it all over. But it seems to have passed muster!

I also went by a sale at Illusive Comics, an area store which I hadn’t visited before. (Well, I might have visited them years ago under their previous incarnation and previous owners, but I honestly don’t remember.) The owners are very enthusiastic, which is a great thing in anyone doing small retail! I’ll probably go back every so often, even though my I already have a regular shop I patronize (Comics Conspiracy). As most stores today do, Illusive seems to be focusing on new books and paperback collections. Unfortunately I’m an outlier among comics fans: the main thing that brings me back to a shop is a good and constantly-changing back issue selection, and the comics retailing biz has moved away from back issues over the last 15 years. And every store has pretty much the same set of paperback collections, so you don’t really need to go to multiple stores for those.

Anyway. Comics retailing is hard enough without listening to me moan about how comics shops aren’t like they were back when I was a teenager, so enough about that.

We spent a good chunk of Saturday doing chores around the house: We did a whole bunch of long-awaited cleaning, throwing away the little things which stack up on bookshelves and in the garage and in nooks and crannies elsewhere. I put up a bike hanger so we could reclaim some floor space by hanging Debbi’s bike above mine. Now Debbi wants to hang the step ladder and our spare folding chairs, so that may be another project soon! Debbi fixed up the shadowbox with my old Mardi Gras beads and coins, and it looks great!

Sunday we had a quieter day. I spent a lot of the afternoon and evening up in the study paying bills, putting together some Magic decks, and doing some cleaning up (though not nearly enough). We also cooked dinner and watched Sunday night baseball.

So that about covers it. We have some more projects to take care of around the house (for instance, replace the long-broken kitchen dispose-all), and I hope we can get a bunch of it taken care of this summer. It ought to keep us busy!

Meanwhile, happy June, everyone!

Welcome Ajay!

Subrata and Susan’s son Akash (Ajay, or maybe A.J.) arrived on Thursday. We visited them in the hospital last night and got the whole scoop; it sounds like things went quite smoothly, and I expect they’ve probably gone home already as I type this.

Ajay seemed surprisingly aware of things going on in the room around him, as he locked eyes with me and with Debbi, and watched the nurse avidly when she came in. I don’t know much about kids, but that seems pretty perceptive for a 24-hour-old kid! His parents would be bouncing off the walls if they weren’t as tired as they are; give ’em a couple of days and they probably will be!

Conservatory of Flowers III: Butterflies

One room at the Conservatory of Flowers is filled with butterflies. Well, “filled” may be too strong a term; in fact, when we first walked in and I saw a butterfly flitting away from me, I was disappointed that it seemed to be the only one.

Then I noticed one on the windows.

And another one.

And then I realized there were dozens – maybe hundreds – of them in there, but only a few were in the air at any one time. And they were all different colors and sizes. Very impressive!

There’s also has a case in which butterflies in chrysalis were evolving from their caterpillar forms, some of them having already emerged.

A few of the many colorful butterflies we saw:

Butterfly!

Butterflies!

Another butterfly!

My favorite butterfly!

Naturally, I highly recommend visiting the Conservatory if you have the chance. It’s great!

Conservatory of Flowers II: Water Plants

More photos from the Conservatory of Flowers. One of the far rooms (well, there are only five rooms, but still) mainly features water plants. As you can see from these photos, this room features some metal railings and artwork, which I presume are a century or more old:

Water plants at the Conservatory of Flowers

More water plants at the Conservatory of Flowers

In addition to orchids, this room contains quite a few pitcher plants, carnivorous plants hanging from a variety of pots:

Pitcher plants at the Conservatory of Flowers

More pitcher plants at the Conservatory of Flowers

There was also this oddity, which resembles a bird of paradise, but I’ve never seen one with the green fronds fanning out like this, so I’m not certain what exactly it is:

Birds of Paradise - maybe?

Conservatory of Flowers I: Orchids

The Conservatory of Flowers is located in a late-19th-century building in Golden Gate Park, and is full of wonderful and fascinating plants. The building apparently has been quite resistant to earthquakes, except that of course it’s covered in glass, and that glass has to be replaced from time to time. (Still, this is less maintenance than some historic buildings require!) It re-opened a few years ago after a major renovation.

I took so many photos when Dad and I visited last week that I’m going to split them up into several posts.

As you can see, the Conservatory is a beautiful building with lovely grounds – and that’s without the summer planting being in place (or so I infer, from the strips of empty dirt amongst the grass):

Exterior of the Conservatory of Flowers, San Francisco
(Click for a larger image)

The whole interior of the buildings is used for exhibits, by the way. I presume they store maintenance equipment elsewhere nearby.

There are orchids throughout the building, in different rooms with different temperatures and climates, and many of them were blooming:

Orchids at the Conservatory of Flowers

Orchids at the Conservatory of Flowers

There are many other plants, too, some of them more exotic-looking than others. I don’t generally expect spiny-looking plants like this one to be so colorful:

Purple plant at the Conservatory of Flowers

I don’t know what that last plant is, though.

Best Name for a Cat I’ve Seen Recently

The feline-in-residence at Recycle Book Store West in Campbell is named Isbn (pronounced “IZZ-bin”):

Isbn at Recycle Book Store West

Recycle West moved to a larger venue a block down the street from where it used to be, which threw us for a minute when we went there today; I was on autopilot and walked almost to the door before Debbi stopped me. The new store a much nicer place, though. I’m glad they’re doing well!

SAGE & Babbage

Here’s a photo of Dad standing in front of the control console and some banks of hardware from the SAGE system at the Computer History Museum last weekend:

Dad standing in front of the SAGE system at the Computer History Museum

You can’t see the cigarette lighter on the console, which is a feature Apple somehow never puts in its iMacs.

Dad says he contributed to the SAGE project in some capacity back in the day, I guess on the software end. Whenever I hear about the SAGE project it always sounds like this big boondoggle which was obsolete by the time it was deployed, but nonetheless was maintained for decades thereafter.

Here I am in front of one of two completed versions of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, also at the museum:

Me in front of Babbage Engine #2 at the Computer History Museum

Unfortunately it wasn’t in operation when we were there. It’s a very impressive aggregation of metal, though; I can see why Babbage was unable to complete it in his own era.

Año Nuevo Elephant Seals

Some photos from our trip to Año Nuevo State Natural Reserve last Friday with my Dad.

These little guys kept flying up to us when we were in a shelter/information hut halfway to the viewing site, hovering briefly, and then flying away. Then they’d do it again. Eventually I realized they must have a nest inside the shelter, and they flew in and landed when we stepped out the other end:

Birds at the Ano Nuevo shelter

One of the seals had tracking devices glued to her head and back, as you can see here. The docents told us that scientists shave their fur to glue these devices to them. Apparently they sometimes fall off on their own, though:

Elephant seal with tracking devices

A few seals were wrestling in the water, while others were galumphing around the shore, like this guy (or gal):

Alert elephant seal

But mostly everyone was asleep, basking in the sun, as you can see in the background of the pictures above.