What Brady thinks of how he takes his meals
Brady’s an opinionated little fellow already
Category: General
2010 Holiday card and letter
When Susan and I got together I adopted her custom of sending a letter along with Holiday Cards. Somehow we never manage to get this out to everyone, so this year I’m posting it here as well. The image to the right is what we had printed on our card, and the letter follows:
Holiday Letter 2010
Hard to believe another year has come and gone but this one has been filled with lots of activity here in Hamilton/Kimball land. For a second year running our biggest news (and belly) is in the photo. We are expecting a little one of some variety yet to be determined sometime around January 8th. Preparations are in full swing and David’s getting in as much video gaming and toy purchasing as possible before the new arrival. We are very excited and can’t wait to see what we’ve been gestating here for the last 9 months. Once again, we were beat by not one but two Hamiltons in our exciting news. In April, Kirsten, Brian and Isabella welcomed Dashiel Carl into the world in Australia while Jesse, Michelle and Raven were busy introducing Benjamin Elliot to the Seattle scene. Fortunately for us, we are in the right position for hand-me-downs!
In preparation for our growing family, we bought a new house this spring and moved in the first of May. Leaving Holyoke was bittersweet. We’re no longer as close to many dear friends and the easy drive up Route 5 to Northampton, but neither of us will miss the city itself much, and we love our little cape in Belchertown. It’s located on a beautiful 3-acre lot with a 4 stall barn and horse ring and abuts 100s of acres of conservation land. We were sure the dogs would love this endless playground, and they do, but it turns out Soolin is more interested in stalking the neighbor’s cat than exploring the acreage. Still, it provides for fantastic daily walks off the lead that Soolin loves more than most things. We managed to get a garden in before it was too late in the spring and even did pretty well with it, bringing about what David dubbed the ‘tomatopocalypse’ in late summer. Our freezer’s stocked, we’re eying new canning techniques and a chest freezer for next season, and we figure we can grow a substantial portion of our child’s food for its first year on our own land. We also purchased chickens this fall, and fit in lots of indoor and outdoor house projects, including trying to coax some of the dozen or so apple trees on the land into producing apples next year. If David has his way, besides this baby, the chickens, and a kitten, we’ll end up with sheep, goats, and whatever else catches his fancy that will fit in 4 barn stalls.
Amidst all the excitement and happiness we’ve experienced this year we also suffered a terrible loss this summer. After a relatively brief battle with cancer we had to have our beloved dog Nori put to sleep. Shortly after moving to our new home she got quite sick and spent several weeks shuttling back and forth to the emergency vet here in Western Mass and finally to Angell Memorial Animal Hospital in Boston for the cancer diagnosis. She died peacefully at home with us by her side and now rests among our flower beds where we visit her regularly. It’s not the same without her around and we miss her terribly, but we’re truly blessed to have shared the time with her that we had.
We’re both doing well at work despite some challenges. Both of us lost our long term bosses this year, with Susan’s heading off to a happy retirement and David’s moving on to greener pastures at NYU. The changes have been an adjustment but with new challenges come new opportunities and all that, and David was asked to serve in his boss’s role while the college searches for a replacement. That’ll take a year or so and in the interim, he reports that it’s mostly good to be the king. Both of us were also secretly nominated to serve on the college’s employee council, which was really gratifying for both of us and felt like an affirmation of the hard work and dedication we bring to our careers. Of course, we then turned them down 🙂 what with a baby on the way and David basically having two jobs for the next year it just felt like too much to take on.
The second annual deep fat turkey fry was much more successful this Thanksgiving with a yummy crispy-skinned, super-moist turkey breast replacing last year’s turkey sushi surprise. Susan still didn’t trust David to fry the “real” turkey so an 18-pounder was roasted in the traditional way leading to more leftovers than you can possibly imagine. We also managed to get some Twinkies into the oil this year but as Susan’s dad pointed out, we still spent more money on the oil than all the cooked things put together. Not the most efficient cooking method, apparently, but delicious all the same, and what price is too much for delicious on Thanksgiving!
Who knows if we’ll have recovered from becoming new parents by the time the next holiday letter is due but we’ll do our best. Until then, we hope you have a happy and healthy 2011.
Love,
Susan, David, & Soolin
Another rabbit fence story
Some weeks ago we dug a trench and ran chickenwire around the perimeter of our garden after the rabbits managed to eat up a bunch of our greens. Since then, things haven’t gone especially well. Now another example of how well this is working, courtesy of Susan. She was out walking Soolin one morning this week and Soolin managed to chase a rabbit into the garden. This time, Soolin got into the garden with the rabbit proceeded to chase it around. The rabbit panicked, ran face first into the chicken wire, bounced off it, recovered, and then scampered up over the chickenwire by using it like a ladder.
!!!
Fucking rabbits.
Taking a month off from the social networks
- Image via Wikipedia
I spent June and part of July experimenting with my use of social media. The widely reported Facebook privacy issues left me questioning how I was using these things, so I decided to stop for a month and get a feel for what that was like.
Turns out I didn’t much notice, or at least not to the extent I expected to.
Granted, I didn’t 100% withdraw from all these services I’ve been using. Partly this is because as part of my job I have to use and understand these tools. Partly this is because it’s harder to disentangle oneself than it ought to be. And partly, it’s because I was occasionally too lazy to take care of the details.
While I’ve really enjoyed reconnecting with old friends on Facebook, particularly friends from my college years, the number of interactions I have with them are an infinitesimally small part of the activity that Facebook generates, and much of that activity is just a distracting cacophony – alerts from crummy webgame and silly apps, mentions of sports results, good and bad meals, and what the weather’s like. I get that even this shallow stuff can help me keep my finger on the pulse of my friends’ lives, and there are also plentiful examples of meaningful and poignant events that I get clued into via all of this, but when I balance it against the amount of time it’s taking, and against my conclusion that basically Facebook is not a company I trust or want to do business with, I conclude that I’m better off disengaging.
This doesn’t mean I’m deleting my Facebook account. What I’ve done is disconnect all third party tools from Facebook, including my twitter account. I’m going to begin routing all content to facebook via my website, because I control it and I can be sure I’m not sharing my friends contact or other information with third parties should they decide to click through on something I’ve posted.
This does mean my Facebook wall will be a lot quieter than in the past, mostly because of the absence of the twitter feed. I’m not going to connect it to my website. I am going to try and return to my previous writing habits over on my site to try and make up for the difference but I’ve had mixed success with that in the past, so who knows how it will go. It shouldn’t make much of a difference to most folks one way or another is the bottom line, and it leaves me with the peace of mind that I’m not an unwitting marketing accomplice for Facebook.
It also means I’ll be a little less likely to respond to stuff that happens on Facebook, because by and large I’m not going to log into the site using a web browser. Instead I’ll use my phone. The iphone facebook app is pretty good, but has some bugs, especially related to photos, meaning sometimes even when I want to look at a photo someone has posted, I can’t. It’s also more awkward to type on, a disincentive to participate in comment threads.
Anyway, that’s the story for now. I’m going to try this for several months and see how it goes.
Nori has slipped off to the great dog park in the sky
Our black lab Nori. She died on July 7, 2010
Our beloved black lab Nori died last week after a sudden and mercifully brief battle with cancer.
Her last month was rough. In mid May she contracted salmonella and spent several days in the animal hospital. At one point during this I actually thought she was going to die she was so ill. Susan and I were greatly relieved when she came home and quickly reverted to her normal self.
Sadly this was not to last. After a couple of weeks we noted that she had begun to put on weight, and within a few days of that we knew something was wrong – she was gaining weight too quickly for this to be normal. The vet suggested it might be gas and we spent several days trying a medication, but to no avail. Within a week she was having so much difficulty breathing that Susan took her off to the animal hospital.
We then spent several weeks trying to figure out what was wrong with her. They drained 2 litres of fluid out of her during her first visit. Her recent bout with salmonella confused the diagnosis, but long story short within a couple of anxious weeks that included multiple hospital visits and drainings and a visit to a specialist hospital in Boston, we had a diagnosis – terminal cancer, probably in multiple locations in her body, but certainly in her bladder and almost certainly in her glands.
Within a week or so of this diagnosis, Nori was dead.
Needless to say this completely sucked. Susan and I were shocked and emotionally devastated. About the only good I can say of this experience was that fortunately Nori did not have to suffer very long. She had some rough weeks, with labored breathing and a rapid decline in body weight and stamina, but she was a trooper right through to the end, still anxious for her meals, eager to please us, and ready with a kiss and a wag of her tail, even when it cost her dearly to raise herself up.
She died in our arms at home on July 7, surrounded by those who loved her. Most of the folks who knew her well got a chance to see her at least once before she died. She’s buried in our yard, in view of the picture windows which look out over one of our gardens.
I’ll miss her dearly. Soolin and Nori did everything with Susan and I – they came to work with us, they’d usually accompany us on our errands, they were our hiking companions, they even attended our wedding (in fact, they’re the only people who attended our wedding!). It’s a terrible loss for us.
We’re going to spruce up the flower garden we buried her in, and I’m going to get a memorial page up for her on this site at www.metamusing.net/nori as soon as I have a chance to pull together enough photos for it.
Near death experience with Nori
Fortunately this story has a happy ending, but it was sad and trying to live through. Sunday afternoon Nori, our 5 year old black lab, threw up extensively in front of Susan and I, and there was troubling stuff in it – mashed potatoes, chicken bones, and other food stuff we couldn’t identify. None of it came from us or our property – she had crept off somewhere, found it, and eaten it, and it made her really sick. Nori’s very food focused thanks to her experiences as a pup living through abandonment during hurricane Katrina, and when she wouldn’t eat her supper that night Susan and I were both mildly troubled. When she wouldn’t eat her breakfast in the morning, and wouldn’t go to the bathroom, I knew something was really wrong and after some debate Susan took her off to the vet. They immediately referred her to the animal hospital.
The hospital’s first guess was a possible blockage of her innards, most likely by chicken bone. Fortunately shortly after they admitted her she got violently ill from the rear, and at the time they thought this was a great sign and that she would soon be on the mend. They x-rayed her and found nothing foreign in her, which was a relief and another good sign.
Unfortunately by Tuesday she hadn’t really improved, and they decided to keep her for observation. She wasn’t eating, and she was still throwing up and leaking from her rear constantly. By this point they concluded she had a bacterial infection of some sort. We were worried but not terribly so.
Wednesday morning Nori ate a little bit and so by lunchtime they concluded it was safe to take her home. Susan picked her up and spent the afternoon watching her, and it wasn’t pretty. She wouldn’t eat, she was still constantly and pretty much uncontrollably leaking from the rear, she was in significant pain that was causing her to constantly pant and quake, and she was completely distressed emotionally. This was really really hard to see and absolutely heartbreaking. She was looking for comfort and spent her time trying to literally crawl under our clothing and huddle against our skin, shivering in pain and staring up at us with pleading eyes. The closest I’ve come to crying in years was that night, looking into her eyes and feeling helpless. At this point I was beginning to think she would die, and the following morning was worse – while she did seem to sleep that night, when she woke up she wouldn’t eat anything, and after drinking a little water she threw it up all over Susan. We called the hospital and they had us bring her back.
This time they did an ultrasound and again found no blockage. They concluded their initial diagnosis was still the likeliest explanation, she was just sicker than we thought, but the ultrasound did pick up fluid in her abdominal cavity. Apparently this is not unusual with bad digestive infections, but it’s also a sign of certain cancers, so they sent a sample to the lab. Meanwhile she went back on the IV and Susan and I sat on pins and needles, getting an update from the doctors every 6 hours or so.
Thursday was status quo until the evening when Nori finally ate something after 4 days of eating basically nothing, which was a great sign, and Friday morning she ate again. They decided if she ate around lunchtime we could come get her, and after she did I went up late afternoon and got her.
It was like night and day. While she had clearly lost a fair bit of weight, and has a shaved belly and rear end (a rear end that looked ridiculous when I first got her – it was literally as red as a baboons ass), she is back to her peppy self – no more pleading eyes, a not infrequent grin to share, energy to bounce around the house and, most importantly for Nori, beg us for food 😉
So – she’s not entirely out of the woods (5 days of a diet of small portions of rice and boiled meat, a bunch of different medications, low activity), but things are definitely looking good. The lab results came back and there was no sign of cancer. Our fingers crossed that she comes through this just fine and with no lasting side effects, except perhaps more of an aversion to food from the trash/wherever the hell she found those mashed potatoes and chicken.
As a side note, we do wish we had health insurance on the dogs. This was expensive, owe $2k and we’re not quite done yet. I’d spend the money again without thinking twice, but man, it still hurts the wallet. This has been the most expensive month of my life, what with a new house, appliances, a tractor, and this being the capper. I told Susan we’re going to rent Nori out as a ‘companion’ to the neighborhood dogs to help pay for all of this l-)
And…metamusing is back
It was a bit painful due to a bad decision on my part and a flaky dist-upgrade from Ubuntu, but if you’re reading this you’ve noticed Metamusing is back. The bad decision led to the extended downtime. We got Charter out to install cable on Friday last week while Susan and I were off from work and unpacking. I tried to bring the server back online that night, and when I brought it up it alerted me that there was a new version of Ubuntu out and asked if I wanted to upgrade. Without really thinking I said sure, and let it start its thing (a dist-upgrade can take quite a while), then moved on to other chores in the house. Some hours later I checked back in with the machine and the dist-ugrade had hard locked the machine, or possibly just killed the usb bus, but either way I could no longer interact with the machine, which was sitting there with an alert that had popped up part way through the upgrade warning me that some packages I was running were no longer supported. Tired already and frustrated, I cycled the power.
Bad choice, which I basically knew when I was making it. This rendered the machine unbootable. With so much else on my plate I turned my attention to other tasks and only returned to it last night. Thanks to a pointer from someone at work the repair was relatively painless. Recovery mode ftw 😉
Site going down while I move
Sometime in the next day or three this site is going to go offline, and it will remain offline for as much as a week as Susan and I move into our new house, get unpacked, and most importantly, get internet service. I’ll post again when it comes back, and also note it on twitter/facebook etc.
Awesome birthday gift
Susan got me my first piece for my birthday
Close call in the parking lot
I always set my parking brake, something I am occasionally teased about. This weekend I got an almost painful reminder of why I do. It was snowing hard when I left work on Friday. I stopped at Atkins Farms for a few things on the way home, and forgot to set the parking brake. By the time I got back to the car it was completely shrouded in a light coating of snow. I could not see once I got in. I had Soolin with me and had picked up a small treat for her while in the store, and I started unwrapping it as I started the car. I turned to give it to her and while she was enjoying it I got a funny sensation and suddenly realized I was moving. I slammed on the brake, sending Soolin tumbling, and flicked on the rear windshield wiper. I was maybe half a car length from a small embankment that sits above Atkins, and the car had scooted most of the way through the parking lot, only 5-6 car lengths in total but my path crossed over 3 lanes of parking spaces and an area where there’s normally a lot of foot traffic. I was super lucky no one was walking through the lot when this happened, and that instincts kicked in and I slammed on the brakes before I went over the embankment. It’s only a couple of feet high but nothing good could have come of it. Three cheers for a little Friday luck!
Dave's Place/Metamusing 