Saying goodbye to a gentle soul

Some of you know that one of my 11 year old tabby cats, Facey, has been going through some heath issues. He was diagnosed with IBD after a biopsy last month and was prescribed high dose steroids. The last couple of weeks he was seemingly doing a little better, but still not eating much.

Monday he started to seem listless and a little off. I increased his steroid dose but by the time I got home Tuesday he was clearly in distress. Wednesday morning I took him to the vet, prepared for the fact that he might not be coming home with me.

I worked with a great vet at Redwood Animal Hospital, and after doing some diagnostics she determined that him to be in advanced Kidney failure, cause unknown. Rather than put him through several days in the hospital, which he would hate, and that would probably not improve his condition, I decided it was time to let him go.

We'd had some good cuddle time before the appointment, and I got some more in before they came in to give him the anesthesia. He purred for me and I chose to believe he was telling me he was ready to go. The end to his suffering was peaceful.

Feeters and I are muddling through. Lots of extra pets, lap and play time.

I'm pondering how to best memorialize my gentle, clownish friend. I didn't want his ashes, and it's hard to plant a tree in a Condo.

For the moment I'm chosing to believe he's off on his next adventure, or being treated to all the wet food he can eat by Bast.

I hope I did right by you my friend. I will always value the trust you put in my hands, even at the end.

Insanity of the Sponge Bob kind

Many of you know that I run. It's one of the things that makes the rest of my life possible. Some know that I'm insane enough to have participated in the Hood to Coast relay for the last 3 years. It's a 197 mile relay race run in teams of 12. Each runner runs 3 times during the course of the race, for a total of between 13 and 21 miles. I'm a part of the Sponge Bob Slowpants team, and yes, our name was included in Runner's World last summer.

The first year I did the race I finished and wondered what the hell I had just done, and why anyone would ever do it again. After a couple of days I decided I wanted to see the other half of the race. The teams are split into 2 vans, runners 1-6 and 7-12, and the terrain and experience is significantly different between the 2. In '06 I ran in the second van and acted as the 'van mom'. I hadn't even crossed the finish line on my last leg before I'd already decided which leg I wanted to run this year, leg 11. So I'm hooked. I acted as van captain again this year.

This thing defies description. Why we willingly pile into a 15 passenger van for 25-30 hours with little sleep and no real hot food for the duration is an open question. But I keep going back. I'm sure I'll do it again next year if we can get in. This year they got 1600 applications for 1000 slots. We were lucky to be a late add when another team dropped out.

We drew a late start for 4 pm, so I didn't run my first leg until around midnight, I honestly don't remember the exact time. It was dark. I ran 4.39 miles on the Springwater trail through Portland, listening to various bits of the Matrix soundtracks, Green Day, or Linkin Park. This first leg is always less than fun for me. The first year it was terribly hot coming down off of Mt Hood in the afternoon sun. The second year I had major muscle cramps in my calves. This year I just couldn't get in a groove. I also lost a few minutes waiting to cross busy intersections. Running in the dark is a little strange. We use head lamps, so it's a matter of following the bobbing light down the trail. I was passed by a stream of faster runners, who each would have considered me a 'road kill'. No kills for me, but with the late start I'm not surprised. The run went on and on. I've stopped trying to memorize the landmarks for distance that we're given on the route maps. In this case, knowing how much further I have to go just adds to my frustration. Since it was dark out, I could see the end from a ways off, and delivered a good finish. I managed an 11:12 pace, a little slower than I wanted and had been training to.

After handing back off to Van 1 we dashed up to St Helena to get some sleep and maybe a shower. I choked down half of a turkey sub I had brought along as post run food. I bring chocolate chip cookies as race food for the vans, but could not face them after making 7 dozen.

A fabulous friend of mine has written a great little app that predicts hand off times based on current pace, and it works like a charm. The magic sheet proclaimed that we would pick the race back up at 5:30-ish. The guys went in to sleep in the school gym, I crashed out on the back seat of the van. In the end our first 6 runners slowed down a bit and I got to sleep until 6-ish. 4 hours of sleep is an amazing thing.

Several people have asked me why I don't just sleep while everyone else is running. The short answer is that we do all our own race support and timing. As the van captain, I go up to the exchange with our next runner and record the let time for the runner coming in, the total time elapsed so far, take up some water for finishing runner, etc. We might stop mid-leg to provide water, etc. At very least we yell 'Nice Butt' as we pass our runner.

I gulped down a Luna bar in the 15 minutes before my leg and jogged off down the road in the mid-morning grey. Running was much more comfortable, and the scenery was pretty. Again I was passed a bunch, but I was satisfied with my pace. The end came sooner than expected, which is always a happy surprise. I also knocked about 50 seconds off my per-mile pace with a 10:23 for this leg.

We stopped at Jewell for a well deserved shower and a burger. You have no idea how good the water from a low flow school shower head can feel after running twice in 12 hours.

One of the amazing things about this race is the sheer number of participants. There are so many vans on the road that we end up with huge trafic jams in the middle of no where. Usually it takes hours to get to the last major exchange point, a quarry in the mountains. The upside to our late start time is that there was much less traffic and we were able to get a great spot under the trees with little to no traffic. The guys grabbed some shut eye in the grass. I devoured a bowl of raspberry sherbet. It's always strange what foods appeal in the last stages of the race.

We took the hand off as projected at 3:45 pm. The liquid sunshine started falling about half way through leg 31 and continued to drip on us for the next 4 legs. But then, most of us will take the liquid variety to a hot afternoon anytime.

I've run longer than 7.3, but at the end of an endurance test like this it's a challenge. Leg 35 is away from the road, following a trail straight through trees and logged forest land. The trail is so straight that it acts like a wind tunnel. It wasn't a gale, but I was definitely running into a breeze most of the time. I started with my normal 10 and 2 intervals, but I varried down the 5 and 2 for most of the leg. Tired of my normal running music, I switched over to Tool about half way through. Runs like this is when the mind games start. If I can't fight through a simple 7 mile run, how can I fight for any of the things I really want in life? I told my team to expect about a 12 minute pace, but I was in danger of falling behind that. In the end it was a complete stranger that helped me through it.

About 5 miles in, I got passed, again. This woman was not running much faster than I was, so I picked up the past to keep step with her for the last 3 minutes of my current interval. At the end of my interval, I stopped and said thanks and waived her on. She stopped to walk with me, and suggested we run together. She had been drafted to fill in for an injured runner only a few days before. Unforunately her team told her that all her legs would be under 5 miles. She was worried about being on the trail by herself. So we teamed up. We didn't follow a set rhythm, just ran as long as we could and then walked for a few minutes. I'm proud to say that most of the time I was not the one to ask for a walk break. She pushed me faster than I normally would have run, but within my capacity. My mother later asked me what we talked about. Mostly we didn't. Sometimes it's just enough to have another person running beside you.

I know volunteers mean well, but telling you you've only got a half mile left when it's more like .8 or .9 is really not helpful. We made the last turn, and this time I did know the remaining distance. We ran and walked, and ran again. Finally we saw the vans, with the exchange at the end of the lot. My team had set up well in front of the exchange, which was very thoughtful. I handed off to my teammate, but the job wasn't done. I ran down to the end of the lane with Lisa(I didn't find out her name until after we finished) to where her team had set up. She handed off, and we hugged, and went our separate ways. In the end I managed an 11:48 pace for leg 3, just under what I promised. I averaged 11:14 over all, not bad for being much less conditioned than I was a year ago.

But back to Lisa. That's one of the interesting things about this race. A few of the people on my team are my normal running buddies, but several I only see once a year. They are great people, and it really doesn't matter how much or how little we have in common the rest of the year. Because one weekend in August, we have this relay. Maybe that's why I keep coming back.

Of Thuderstorms and strange internet cafes

I'm at Pennsic War, and the weather is less than ideal. West coast girl that I am, the humidity is killing me.

However, last night the weather had an upside. We had a doozy of a thunderstorm, a weather phenomena I really miss as they do not happen often in the great NorseWet.

I sat out by the fire and watched the light show in the clouds for a couple of hours before the serious rain started. It is a little more intimidating to watch one of these while camping in a canvas tent, with a tarp day shade the only place to both be able to see and be covered. There was very little thunder, and very little visible lightning, but the flashes in the clouds would light up the entire sky to almost mid-day brightness. Natural fireworks at their most dramatic. Eventually the real rain blew in and drown the fire, and I stood under the corner of the kitchen day shade for another 30 minutes or so watching the fury of the rain and wind.

Eventually I decided I'd had enough and wandered down to my tent through the rain to go to bed and make sure that the stakes hadn't pulled lose from the sodden ground. Yep, another problem we don't have in An Tir.

Just as I took the turn at the bottom of the hill, a huge visible flash of lightning split the sky directly in front of me, ending behind the tree line to the east. The thunder clap was delayed by a second or two, close but not immediately on the Pennsic grounds.

Here's the funny part. As soon as I endered my tent and turned to secure the door flap, the rain stopped. Completely. No more lights, no more thunder.

No, I don't think I'm that good. But I do think the natural powers that be put on a fantastic show for me last night :>

And yes, the laptop I'm writing this from is in a tent.

We all knew it....

I am the Devil. At least that's my Tarot Card.

You are The Devil

Materiality. Material Force. Material temptation; sometimes obsession
The Devil is often a great card for business success; hard work and ambition.
Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. This is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement. As a person, the Devil can stand for a man of money or erotic power, aggressive, controlling, or just persuasive. This is not to say a bad man, but certainly a powerful man who is hard to resist. The important thing is to remember that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you allow it.

What Tarot Card are You?

Take the Test to Find Out.

Mine seems to key on whether I want to live in the real world or a fantasy world. If I pick the real world, I come up as the High Priestess. But it's far more amusing to be the Devil.

Sitting at work on a Saturday night

Who in their right mind would volunarily be at work on a Saturday night?

Well, given that I have not had power for going on 2 days, and it's warm here, me. A huge wind storm blew through on Friday and knocked over 1 million meters offline. That's meter count, not people count. The whole city of Redmond, including the evil empire, was offline for about 24 hours. Last night about 11:45 the city came back on line. I know this because my power kicked back in at about that time. Unfortuantely, it went back out 2 minutes later. And has stayed out. At last check the room temperature and fridge temperature were narrowing in on each other, Room 51, fridge 45. I'm hoping the power will come back on before I lose the several hundreds of dollars of frozen dinners in my freezer.

So after wandering around for a while today shopping and being warm in various retail spaces, I'm taking advantage of the network and power at work. At least for a few minutes more while the electronics finish charging. Then I'm going to go pick take out chinese and go home and light several dozen candles. I've had several offers of staying on the couch of people with power or generators, but I'd rather stay home with my boys. Besides. Every once in a while its fun to snuggle in with a book and read to candle light. But I'm thinking the shelf life on that one is exactly one night. But this gives me a chance to burn some of the several hundred candles I have.

I'm particularly frustrated that I will not be able to make a promised dessert for a party tomorrow. Unfortunately all the grocery stores were offline long enough that they tossed their soft cheeses. So marscarpone is not to be had. So no Eggnog Tiramisu Trifle for the college crowd. Luckily I have been able to get the ingredients for the Mocha Raspberry trifle. I'll head down to Chez Carter a bit early and put it together down there.

You can thank Rkimedes for this entry. She called earlier while they were out running errands and bemoaned the fact that she couldn't blog about being isolated by the power outage.

First, a few news items.

Here are a few news items of interest over the last week:

A week ago:
377 Ill on Freedom of the Seas, Norovirus blamed


And today:
Norovirus Attacks Royal Caribbean's 'Freedom of the Seas'
Second Outbreak prompts cruise ship scrubbing

First, we're all fine. But it made for an interesting week. Much more info to come.

You can go Home again

D-8 and counting.

Me Padre(MP) is having a significant natal celebration this weekend, so I'm back at the family homestead for the holiday weekend. A little down time and Battlestar Galactica will do me good.

Flying the day before Thanksgiving is never terribly smart, but given the other significant travel in my immediate future, I was not inclined to extend this trip. I don't know what it is with me and interesting trips through Seatac, but this one had its moments.

MP has a particular affection for the salmon pate from the grocery store formerly known as Larry's. Luckily, I have access to the one remaining location. I packed 2 4 ounce containers of the salmon around a pint of frozen Marionberry jam, and zipped them up with the bell from hell. Yes, I decided to buy MP a very large, very heavy windchime for his birthday. This sucker weighs at least twenty pounds and I was not looking foward to carrying it, but putting it in my luggage was guaranteed to throw my bag over the weight limit. Plus I wanted it to arrive in one piece.

Traffic was fine, and my preferred parking lot still had space. Amazingly enough, curbside and ticket lines were short. TSA has done one smart thing, they've put an officer out in front of the security line to answer questions about the 'liquids and gels' limitations. Which, it turns out, also applies to food. So I was left with the choice of tossing the salmon, or checking it. Of course, my checked back was long gone by this point. So I had to check the bell and the salmon in the large tapestry shoulder bag I was hauling them in. The curb guy was very helpful and put it in a large plastic bag, so I crossed my fingers that it would make it through in one piece and waved it off into the dubious care of the baggage handling system.

Let me point out the irony that once I was behind the security check point, I could go buy a small fortune's worth of Body Shop products and carry them right onto the plane, along with a sealed bubble tea cup of Kathy Casey's Pomegranate Lemonade. Go figure. Mmmmm, love Dish D'Lish. Mmmmmmm.

Oh, where were we? Oh yes. The state of modern airport Security *rant warning* All of this fun and excitement because of a plot that turns out to have been COMPLETELY OVERBLOWN and not technologically possible. *sigh*

At least this was a proof of concept that I can still carry my personal version of the Roaming Gnome, an EB waterbottle, as long as it's empty.

Of course, in the end the tapestry bag was fine. I wish I could say the same for my large rolling duffel. I clearly had a more eventful trip than I did, as it arrived on the baggage conveyer sans a significant section of structural strapping on the top. A week before the cruise. And when I toddled over to the luggage claims desk to report this, all I got was a 'We aren't liable'. Lovely. Thanks.

Luckly Costco came to my rescue and I have a new replacement with even more fun compartments.

Time to see if the howling of the windstorm will put me to sleep.

Tomorrow: Hopefully surprising MP with one of his b-day gifts.