ironic… like rain the day after your wedding.

I’m leaving now. I’m ambivalent about it, because there are pluses and minuses to being here in Ontario. In fact, here are some of them:

+ First, I enjoy living with my wife much more than living 2,000 miles away
- I do not enjoy being isolated from the university, people, and other resources that help me do my job. It feels like trying to run a business in Pittsburgh from a tent in the Sierras.
+ It’s only 3 months in the summer
- Then there’s winter… Continue reading →

Here’s a video of Dexter eating a black bean. It was really funny the first time he did it, but there was no video. So I fed him another one, but the video was too dark to be usable. So I fed him a third one in a brightly-lit location, and he didn’t do the funny things anymore.

But now I know how to upload to YouTube, which is pretty much the entire point.

A & Me at San Diego Temple 11/05

It’s freaking cold here! I mean, for Texas. I don’t think it’s quite hit freezing yet, but it’s been hanging around freezing’s neighborhood, giving it the evil eye. The cold doesn’t want to really go away, even when I’m indoors. Today on the elliptical trainer, I (yes, it’s true) CHAFED MY NIPPLE! Yes, Virginia, men have nipples too. And they get chafed. By their shirts. It really hurts, in an embarrassing sort of way.

I saw a totally adorable video of my wife and our cat. He’s adorable and evil. She’s beautiful and significantly less evil. It’s like seeing vanilla and chocolate, right there in the same dish.

I have no motivation to do anything. It’s depressing. It may be due to Greg Bear’s habit of ending books on distinctly unresolved and unhappy notes, and getting you there in a style that Patricia Cornwall outgrew in her 20s. The plot and sci-fi elements were good, though. Maybe I should aim for bed.

Last Picture of Dexter… sniff

Yesterday was mellow. I stayed up waaaaay too late, but I enjoyed my laziness (maybe a little too much). Today, it’s time to slowly work my way back into my job. Sigh. It’s just going to be depressing to go pick up my laptop now, when it will be another two or three months before my next trip to Canada. Grrr. Lots needs doing, of course, but I’m still unmotivated to do it. Maybe this has something to do with going to bed way late last night. Also, it’s cold outside. COLD! I haven’t been back long enough for this to seem like a novelty.

red means hold it right there.

The photo is Alex in our NYC hotel (hers, her roommate’s & mine), demonstrating the funky lighting that came standard in the funky bathroom. A cockroach or two also came standard.

In other news, boy am I tired. It’s surprising how exhausted you can get, sitting around and doing nothing for days on end.

Stairs at Museum in NYC 5/06

In this post: missed Temple appointment, delicious dinner, scary book leading to survivalist mentality, worms in cat’s butt.

Continue reading →

I’m up too early, as usual. I need a couple more hours of sleep, given how late I stayed up. As usual. The cat is being very strange. Last night, he didn’t beg for dinner (and didn’t finish it all at once!). This morning, he’s acting like 7:30 is just any old regular time of day. We think maybe he’s sick or something. Or perhaps he’s found ways to forage for extra food that we have neglected to cat-proof. The little beast really will eat anything.

Last night’s Scrabble score (woo hoo!):
A: 268
D: 303

Christmas was a mighty fine experience. I’ll need to do aerobics for a month to lose the weight, but it was lots of fun. Alex’s family are good people, and pleasant to be with. I got to hear Veronica and Geoff of Flotilla play/sing some of their gorgeous stuff. I got delicious meals and snacks. I got some presents (Alex is a most excellent gift-giver, and the gifts from others were very thoughtful, too), and I got to spend lots of time with Alex.

We went to Midnight Mass with our friend Amanda, and we got to sing “What Child Is This” at church (and at Amanda’s house for her parents). All in all, a most delightful holiday. Oh, and Amanda gave me a gift certificate for a sporting goods store, so I can get some hockey skates. Sweet! That’s on the list for today. She and Alex seem to be under some weird impression that I’ll need to learn how to move forward when I’m on the ice, despite the fact that I’ve reassured them that I used to skate a lot (so I think I’ll only fall five or six times in horribly embarrassing ways before I get the hang of it again). And now it’s time to go back to nappy time.

Today I made a pie. It’s apple. I followed a recipe on the internet (instead of my old standby, Cookie (Shadle) Hutto’s recipe. The main advantage of the internet recipe was that it included units, such as “cups” and “teaspoons.” This made it a much easier recipe to follow. Cookie always got good results from her pies, but I didn’t. I suppose it might have been a translation issue.

Anyway, here’s the pie.

Also, sweetie pie took a couple of pictures of my cat, with whom I’m as fascinated as a new dad. Here are pics that you may or may not care to see. She took a really great one of his freakish paw.

Yay! The beast does know how to use a litterbox! It took a night of locking him in the bathroom to find this out, but it was worth it. To me. Actually, he didn’t do too badly. He wanted out, but it wasn’t terrible. He didn’t whine all night, or anything. Good kitty.

In other news, I slept terribly last night. I woke up about a dozen times between 4:30 and 6:30 (when I finally got up). Restless. Must be the drugs.