Archive for 1999

December 1999 Reflections

December 12, 1999: Well, another weekend has vanished. It was pretty quiet - I spent most of Saturday afternoon making Christmas desserts - Holden fudge and English mince pies. The fudge actually turned out okay this year. Sometimes I get the timing wrong and either overcook it or undercook it - which normally means rock or goo. One of these days I really ought to get a candy thermometer. Somehow, this year, I actually managed to get the "soft ball" stage thing to work. Added the peanut butter and poured it and voila! Perfect fudge. It's not like the fudge you buy at the candy store - not everyone likes it because it isn't perfectly smooth. It has just a hint of graininess, probably from the peanut butter. The mince pies, made with Robertson's traditional mincemeat, are traditional English pies - small ones that are perfect for snacking. You can buy them everywhere in England and they are delicious, but they don't make them here, so I make them instead. They are surprisingly easy to make, if you have a good pastry recipe and technique. This batch is rapidly disappearing. I'll probably make another batch when Christmas arrives. I was actually hoping to make some other goodies this weekend but somehow never managed it. I thought it would be nice to have a good variety, and figured I would take some of the extras in to work and maybe send some off to family in Australia for a care package so that we don't have to eat all of them ourselves. Maybe tomorrow.

We were kind of lazy today. We rented a couple videos to watch after we worked out this morning: Analyze This and Enemy of the State. I liked Analyze This pretty well - a silly story which was worth renting. Enemy of the State was okay. Gene Hackman played a sort of nerdy character, which was a strange part for him to play. I liked his cat. Worth renting if you are bored and like conspiracy/paranoia stories. We watched a much better Gene Hackman film on Friday, something I taped off of TV. It was Absolute Power with Clint Eastwood, one of my favorite actors. His character in this is very cool, and the plot was well done and clever. If you like Dirty Harry films, see this. I think we'll buy a copy.

The only other constructive thing I did today was wrap presents. Time to put things in the mail. I still need to seal up the boxes and add labels, but most of the work is done.

My new story is available now. Go to the Fiction page for details. It's only part one, but it is quite long, about a forty page word document, so I had to stop in order to get it ready for posting this month. I plan to start working on part two this week - lots of work to do, I suspect. My plot idea is a little ambitious.

December 8, 1999: It has been a busy couple of days. I've been working on Christmas cards for the last couple of days after finishing this year's Cookie Chronicles - most are in the mail now. I actually plan to post Cookie Chronicles on our website after most of the cards have had a chance to arrive - though I'll probably only put it up for a few weeks over the holidays.

Everything looks very seasonal around here. Many of the houses in the area have lights now. The icicle lights are very popular this year. I think they look best on the larger houses. We took a drive tonight after dinner to look at all of the lights - really pretty. We've also decorated inside. We put our tree up this weekend. The cats love it. There aren't any packages under it yet... just cats. They practically live under there. We use a big red flannel sheet as a tree skirt, so I guess it is a pretty comfy place for a cat.

November 30, 1999: Okay, it isn't officially December yet, but I'm stuck at home with an awful head cold, so it seemed like a good time to mess around with the web page. I've spent the morning drinking lots of orange juice and working on the PussiCam pages over on Geocities. Take a look The Cat Page - you can now read about how we adopted our felines.

Also, my new story should be out soon. I finished revising it today (I hope) - it should be available in a few days.

November 1999 Reflections

November 15, 1999: It certainly has been a busy couple of weeks. We've had company for much of that time. Nicola came to visit us during the first week of November, staying for about four days. Wayne took her on a tour of Boston, and we had a chance to go down to Mystic Seaport in Connecticut on the weekend to enjoy the historical village and see the beautiful ships - they have an authentic working shipyard where they are currently building a replica of the Amistad. We also did a fair amount of shopping - Nicola is much more shopping savvy than me! Lots of fun. It was her first time over here, and I think she enjoyed seeing what America is like and generally playing tourist. For the record, we took her to four different states while she was here! Not bad, huh?

My dad came to visit last week for a day and a half while passing through on a whirlwind business trip. We had a fantastic time - had a racquetball tournament (he won by one game - ready for a rematch yet?), visited the driving range, worked out, played pool, did a little bit of shopping for Christmas, and saw the new film, Double Jeopardy. I have to admit I was a little stiff from all of the exercise after he left, but we had a great time. Check out the picture we snapped with our QuickCam on the New Stuff page. I'm really glad he had a chance to stop here for a few days before heading back - Australia is so far away. We are hoping to get over there sometime next year for a proper visit.

After all that activity, we had a pretty quiet weekend. We spent all of Saturday and a little of Sunday raking up tons of leaves - 29 bags worth. Needless to say I'm a little sore again. Should be recovered by tomorrow though. I should keep this up - I'd be in excellent shape if I did this stuff all the time!

Of course, I've also been busy working, but I'm managing to get a little more writing done in my spare time. This month's project is a new Serena story - check out my Fiction page for details.

November 1 1999: We had a pretty typical Halloween. I think there were more kids this year than last year - somewhere in the range of 55. It's hard to keep an accurate count when they flood the door in numbers of ten or more. They were all generally well behaved this year, although I've noticed that many of them don't seem to be saying "Trick or Treat" anymore - they just wait for you. A little strange. We still have some candy left. I also gave out Halloween pencils and little plastic spiders and cheap things like that, which surprisingly went very quickly. I let the kids choose what they want, and they often go for the non-candy item - contrary to what you would expect. Occasionally a parent with a younger child will react enthusiastically. I remember one parent last year who tried to get his child to change from candy to a pencil, but the child only wanted candy. That was funny. The pencils this year were really good because they had Halloween erasers in the form of a witch, a pumpkin, or a ghoul. Another amusing Halloween phenomenon is the appearance of the mini-vans. They roam up and down the streets. I suppose parents must use them to ferry tired children home, but it always seems very strange. One parked in front of our house for a half hour. I didn't do too much decorating this year. I put up a few things in the windows, carved a jack-o-lantern, and lit many candles. I also dressed up slightly, donning a favorite long dark green dress, laced-up black boots, and excessively dark eye makeup. I hope I looked sufficiently weird. Everything is put away now. No more decorations until after Thanksgiving, when we can put up the window candles.

And now... something for the cat fans. Cally was a pain today. I couldn't find the container for my sandwich this morning, so after I made it, I put it in a plastic bag (the non-zip kind) and left it on the counter, ready to take to work. Half an hour later, as I came into the kitchen to pick up my things and head to work, I discovered my sandwich on the floor, in pieces, scattered over several square feet. Cally had pulled it off of the counter and out of the bag and was proceeding to nibble at turkey and bits of mayonnaise covered bread. Apollo was helping with the eating. She is really getting to be a brat where food is concerned. She is such a food hound! I've never known a cat who cared so much about people food before.

Let's see, what else... we're getting ready for Nicola's arrival on Wednesday night. The house is nice and clean (despite the usual rampant cat hair!) and the refrigerator is stocked with loads of food. Spaghetti pie is on the menu for Wednesday - good for reheating. I'm not yet sure what we'll get up to this weekend. I think Wayne is going to take her on a tour of Boston on Friday, and I'm sure we'll fit some shopping in there somewhere.

My father is also due out in a week. He's in California at the moment on his business trip with Australian colleagues. They're having the usual language difficulties. He is getting his own back after months of trying to understand Australian words... now he's having to translate mortgage terms and American English. What happens when you try to order white coffee from a black person at Jack in the Box (like Burger King) in San Francisco while speaking with a heavy Australian accent? Needless to say, it has been an interesting trip, so far.

The only other thing of note is that I've been doing some more writing. I've spent the last few weeks working on some material for my novel or for a short story. I'm not sure which it will be. I'm letting the story develop at its own pace for the moment. However, I'm going to take another break from it this month. As of today I've started working on a second Serena story. Check out my fiction page for more details.

October 1999 Reflections

October 18, 1999: Autumn is definitely here. The cold days have arrived, although we did have a bit of a respite this weekend with some temperatures reaching the 70's. We spent Saturday afternoon driving around looking at the trees and the colorful leaves, stopping at the Berlin Orchards for some delicious warm apple crisp and a few minutes of wandering around the shop looking at all the crafts and trinkets. It was more crowded than last year (as I recall, last year it was rainy, so that might explain it). They drive cartloads of people out to the orchard to pick their own apples. Lots of kids. Oh, and there's also a pumpkin patch. We came home with a few Christmas ornaments, a Christmas present, and a pumpkin for Halloween. That was the highlight of our weekend. We spent Sunday doing yard work and cleaning house.

Now I have a question for those of you who are kid savvy. What do you do to stop the neighbor's kid from messing with your mailbox? We started noticing early this summer. We kept finding the flag up at weird times and eventually deduced which kid was tampering with it. He's only about four or five. Though he lives two houses down, he's constantly in front of our immediate neighbor's house because they also have kids. I suppose he usually does it when we are at work or are out running errands on the weekends, but a few weeks ago I watched him sneak up and actually look inside the box... unfortunately I was busy upstairs at the time and was too late to do anything - he was gone by the time I went outside. We don't think he's ever taken anything, but you can imagine how annoying it is to think that he might one of these days... and I'm sure that the mailman doesn't appreciate stopping because the flag is up only to find there isn't anything to pick up. This weekend we caught little Matthew in the act - he furtively walked up and started playing with the box while Wayne was in plain view doing yard work! This time we were able to reprimand him. He ran off in a hurry, quite guilty, leaving his bike behind. It took him five whole minutes to work up the guts to come back for it. I hope that he's scared off from his obsessive hobby for a while... next time we catch him in the act, we will approach his parents, but I am left with doubts about whether it is going to do much good. What an odd thing to have to talk to someone about. "Could you get your little boy to stop playing with our mailbox?" Hmmm. Any suggestions?

October 14, 1999: Today was a day of extremes - weather-wise, anyway. Things seemed normal enough when I left the house this morning - just a typical autumn morning of partial clouds and sun and wet ground from last night's rain. But as I drove to work, the western sky looked as ominous and dark as the backdrop in a scary movie - complete with flashes of lighting. By lunchtime we had rain and a whipping wind, and the temperature had dropped significantly. Yet by the end of the day, the dramatic storm had vanished leaving a perfectly cloudless sky. There are many more leaves on the ground now, though.

It's Friday tomorrow. I'm glad the weekend is almost here. It will be nice to take it easy after such a busy week and after last weekend's whirlwind trip.

October 12, 1999: Well, talk about your busy weekends. I suppose some of you were wondering why the PussiCam was down for a few days. The kitties were in the kennels while we went to England for a quick visit. Our trip began with one of those long red-eye flights on Thursday evening. We arrived early Friday morning and headed up to Barnsley to visit everyone. Though we were very tired we enjoyed our visits with Wayne's dad, his grandmother, and Aunt Yvonne, Uncle Dave, Gareth, Nathan, and Bethany. The kids are really getting big! Saturday was a sightseeing day - usually when we go over we spend most of our time visiting family, so this time we decided to do something a little different. We visited Chatsworth House. My old 1991 edition of Let's Go describes it thus: "The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire's palatial residence is surrounded by 100 acres of creative landscaping by Capability Brown, and tends to attract scores of gawking Americans." Well, I did my best to gawk - have to keep up the image, you know. Actually, there weren't too many foreigners - most of the visitors were English. The house-turned-museum was full of expensive and extravagant things - Greco-Roman murals graced many ceilings and walls, rooms were spacious and full of antique furniture, and they had an impressive art collection. However, the most impressive thing about the whole estate was the garden. I would definitely go back to wander around the garden again. They had a hedge maze which we wandered around for a bit - I've always wanted to do that - and there were secluded paths leading down to small ponds. There was an interesting water sculpture named "Revelation". A huge gold ball rested inside of four silver leaves. The ball spouted water and filled slowly over five minutes. As enough water filled the ball, the weight pulled the sculpture shut. It remained shut for a minute until it released the water and the leaves opened again, revealing the ball like a piece of ripe fruit. Besides the sculpture and the maze, there were countless paths wandering amongst trees and waterfalls, ponds and a wide variety of plants and flowers. Many of the flowers are still blooming because the cold weather hasn't arrived yet. If you live in England or are going to visit and you haven't been to Chatsworth, I'd definitely recommend it. It's south of Sheffield in the Peak District National Park.

We spent Sunday with Wayne's cousin Tracey and did a little more sightseeing. She lives in Rugby, so she took us down to Stratford-upon-Avon which isn't very far away. Stratford is one of the most touristy places I've been to in quite a while, but the buildings are picturesque and old. The river is also very pretty. After lunch in a pub we stopped to watch the swans and ducks for a while before heading back to Rugby. We also stopped in Leamington Spa to enjoy a beautiful and peaceful park. Then we passed the evening back at Tracey's house watching The Full Monty and playing with her PlayStation games. If you haven't seen The Full Monty, you're missing out. This was our second viewing, and it was just as funny as the first time. At any rate we really enjoyed our visit with Tracey. It was a pity we had to leave at such an early hour to get down to the airport and miss the M25 traffic. Tracey's house looks great by the way - you should see all the progress she is making on redecorating.

That was our weekend. We did manage to do a little shopping - bought a lot of chocolate and other sweets. We also had the opportunity to meet the artist who painted a couple of the prints we bought on our previous trip. His name is John Wood, and he does some wonderful landscapes of the Yorkshire area. We'd really like to buy an original next time. He was working on a gorgeous painting of some poppies. Can you believe it only takes him a week or so to do each painting? Anyway, we didn't buy anything by John Wood this time because we found a print by another artist named Lionel Aggett. It's another flower scene from somewhere in the south of France. I think it will be perfect in the family room.

Our trip was over almost as soon as it was begun. We were home by Monday afternoon. Unfortunately, we couldn't pick up the cats until Tuesday morning because the vet closed early due to the Columbus Day holiday. The cats were very happy to come home this morning - they really hate the kennels. Especially Apollo. Apparently he was very grouchy. I always hate to leave them right away after I've picked them up from the kennels because they act so lonely.

October 5, 1999: Just thought it might be amusing to record a few thoughts here. Looks like many of you are starting to take a look at our web page. At least some of you have been looking at the PussiCam - since I got the Java auto-refresh working this weekend, the counter has gone up maybe 15 times, and I think I've only loaded it maybe three or four times from work. Not that there has been much to see. Yesterday the computer crashed before lunch and there weren't any new pictures all afternoon. Today it crashed again sometime between 9 and 10, but I came home at lunch and resurrected the silly thing. I'm not sure why it keeps crashing, but I think maybe it has something to do with the Seti screen saver. We've never had much luck with screen savers. More experimentation is in order, but I think for the moment I'll leave it disabled during the day. In the meantime, the camera was pretty much operational all afternoon, but I never saw any of our cats. I'm pretty sure they must have come in at some point in the late afternoon because the toy ball had moved, but I never saw anything. I guess leaving the window open isn't working out very well, now that the weather is turning colder - they're probably all curled up downstairs on the blanket on the couch. Well, the window idea was destined to fail with the increasingly cold weather. I'm not sure how else to entice the cats into the office during the day. I'll continue to leave a few favorite toys in here, I suppose, and I might contemplate putting another cozy blanket in here. Maybe I should get another one of those cardboard scratching things they like so much. You might also try to keep an eye out for them first thing in the morning or in the evening. If I'm sitting at the computer and they're around, I'll try to adjust the camera position to get a few good shots. Here's a great one:

Tana wonders why I'm holding this little ball in front of her!

Of course, you might also catch the odd glimpse of me or Wayne. Best times are first thing in the morning before I head off to work, and evenings - and if we're in here, the cats are going to be around, too. They're especially energetic if they haven't yet been fed. I like to leave the camera running when I'm doing email and otherwise working on the computer. The camera does not take the most flattering pictures, but I don't mind that much. A few friends have already spotted me. Not sure if anyone has spotted Wayne yet. He was on line a bit this weekend.

Let's see... what else. It is definitely feeling like autumn now. We're starting to run the heat in the mornings and evenings now, and many of the trees are starting to get the pretty reddish oranges. I'm going to dig my winter coat out soon. Many of the houses around the neighborhood are also looking festive - some people have put out pumpkins, cornstalks, bails of hay, mums, and Halloween decor (one house has all these bizarre orange and white "ghost" things hung up in their trees). I'll put a few things up in another couple weeks for Halloween - I don't like to do that too early.

The photos came in today from Wayne's trip to San Francisco as well as some pictures from Boston when the Traceys were here. So we'll definitely have some new stuff up in the Photo Gallery next month.

A picture of me from December 1994, taken by the side of the river Wear in Durham, UK

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Updated February 22, 2003.