Starry Wisdom

Last night we took my dad to Topolobampo for his 60th birthday. This in and of itself would have been awesome, but we had an extra surprise. For, the table across from us was reserved for none other than Barack and Michelle Obama. This was just a great icing on the cake of my dad’s birthday dinner.

In case you’re wondering, pretty much everyone in the restaurant just let them be, and let them eat a “normal” dinner, well as normal as dinner can be at what has to be the finest Mexican Restaurant in the US if not the world.

Well, I got a new domain, on a whim, last night. And I moved the blog there. The old location still works, mind you, so if you were following my rss feed, it will just WORK. Otherwise, please find me at www.squidopus.net.

I made the name up because i figured squid and octopus domains were all taken, and octopuid sounds lame. Plus it is reminiscent of Vampyroteuthis infernalis (the vampire squid from hell) which is a squid that looks like an octopus:

Also a bonus pic, of quite possibly the cutest cephalopod around, the dumbo octopus (Grimpoteuthis):

When I was younger, well, until I was 15 or so, my parents live in a town house in unincorporated Maine Township, in Illinois. The mailing address was Des Plaines, but it wasn’t and isn’t part of any city. Anyway, at the time I didn’t know or really understand, but the townhouses in the area do not have any sort of HOA associated with them. Everyone maintains their external structure and landscaping as they see fit.

Now, back when we lived there, I guess this was not really an issue. At least in the few “buildings” that I had much connection too. (It was pretty densely populated, with groups of 4 houses packed rather tightly. Maybe a satellite picture would be useful:

View Larger Map

The longer buildings are the 4 long town houses. Surrounding are a lot of duplexes. My parents house was near the marker in that map. Anyway, my point that I am slowly approaching, was that back at the time when my parents first moved in and when I was younger, despite there being no HOA, the people in the contiguous units worked together so that at least the external apperance of the units were consistent. Now, not so much – you’ll see one quarter of a building with aluminum siding, as opposed to the original wood, and sometimes even units painted different colors than their neighbors. Quite chaotic. And the landscaping is just insane. Most of the trees are gone from the area near my parents old house, so there is just bare lawn – except for one house which is almost completely overgrown by trees that were not there when we left around 18 years ago. It’s really amazing.

The crux of this is that while this was a great place to grow up, for me, now it seems rather sad and run down. I am not 100% sure why, and what happened, but it made me sort of sad.

Strangely, I am the first one awake my parent’s house this morning. I am not sure why I woke up at 8:30 (although I woke up first at 6, 7 and 8 before this), but I could tell I was done sleeping. Oh well, at least my mom bought some good tea that I am drinking.

I made another longer post on my travel blog. I have to decide if I want to coalesce them together or not at some point.

I am in Chicagoland for my Dad’s 60th birthday (we’re celebrating tonight – dinner at Topolabampo, YUM!).

Yesterday I tried to get a gift for my dad in Evanston, and failed. But while I was there, I decided to walk around the concrete lagoon which we’ve called Lake Oregano for 15 years or so:

I actually walked around it about 5 times, while chatting with my childhood friend Jason, who I am going to lunch with today, so I can meet his first kid (who is 6 months old or so). That should be interesting.

While we’re at it, I will share a photo of a real lake:

Afterwards, I went and hung out with my wonderful Grandma for a couple of hours. I took a couple of pictures of her and me, because there are a bunch of them with my brother and sister-in-law and her from the past year or two. And none of me. Well, I fixed that:

Afterwards, I hung out at home a bit, before going in to the City proper to hang out with my childhood friend Mike and his wife Randy, and their dog Toby. I had dinner at their place, and chatted and what not. The important thing to discuss now, however, is Toby:

He has the most adorable hair, and looks like a living stuffed animal. I got to hear some great stories, which I had heard in part, relating to Toby’s early life. You see, Mike and Randy met around a month after she got Toby.

That, in and of itself is not too surprising, but the next detail is pretty interesting. The key factor is that the poor puppy had a broken leg, because his doggie gate fell on him :(.
Evidently Mike was coming home after watching a Cub’s game and saw Randy on his street (she lived basically across the street at the time) and, having had a few beers, asked her what she did to her poor puppy. She told him that she did nothing, and he accepted that, and went home.

A few days later, he was coming home, again a bit tipsy, and ran in to Randy and Toby a second time. He had this brilliant idea that since she had a new puppy at home she probably didn’t have much time to do anything other than puppy maintenance, so he would offer to cook for her. In his hot sober state this offer extended from just cooking to cooking and vacuuming. For some reason the vacuuming idea impressed her (although scared her too) and she asked him to 1) take off his hat and 2) his age, before giving him her phone number. I asked if 1) above was to see if he was bald, but she said “mostly to make sure he was as old as he said he was, I thought he was in college!”. Anyway, despite this awkward beginning they got married last November. All because of Toby – well and the Cubs and beer.

Tomorrow I am going to Chicago for 10 days. Long trip, I know. And it’s likely to be very hot and humid in August. Well, the time is because it’s my dad 60th birthday – er, yesterday. But we’re celebrating it on Saturday, so my timing is ok. As for the duration, well, I know a lot of people there, and if I go for a short period of time I have to either dis a lot of people, or run around like a mad man. So, a week and a half in August it is. At least my parents and central air, and my brother has a window unit in his spare bedroom, plus  gigantic one that covers most of his house that I helped him put in last year.

At long last, I’ve taken the plunge and decided to move away from using LJ as the primary “blog”. I’ve set up wordpress to write at, and will crosspost, in general. At least for now.

This is completely for myself. I didn’t mean to be all emo again, but I think I need to, for my own records.

Yesterday, we spent all day with sneakers. We took a nap in the bed, and sat wth her outside, and on the couch. While outside Sneakers saw a humming bird, and hid in some flower bushes. She couldn’t move much, but I know she was enjoying it in the best way possible. I gave her a couple of raspberries, which she licked at, but couldn’t really muster the strength or desire to eat. The same with treats, and her soft food.

When the time came, she got right in to her carrier, which was odd, she usually despised it. She was silent on the car ride, unlike normally when she would mew and meow the entire way to the vet. She would also not take any Pounce treats, even her favorite catnip variety.

At the vet, they quickly brought us in to the back room, and we took the top off the carrier and let Sneakers sit quietly on her towel. Soon the vet came in, and remarked that Sneaker’s fur was still amazingly shiny, soft and silky, despite being so ill (we knew this already, Sneakers always had awesome fur). The vet then told us what was going to happen, and then we began the procedure. Sneakers lay still as Erin and I pet her, and within a minute of starting, she had passed on, quietly, and peacefully.

We cried over her corpse for a bit, and said our final goodbyes. I, of course, had already had a separation from her, so this has been much harder on Erin.

After we left, we made a stop at Bevmo, for some booze, cheese and crackers. When we got back, erin cried in bed as I threw out the litter boxes, and cleaned up the food dishes. It was very weird to see Erin’s house without those things in it, and to know that there was no cat hiding somewhere.

Again, goodbye Sneakers, you were the best cat ever.

Sneakers, my ex’s cat, who was also my cat for a long time (and I still consider my cat, even though I don’t live with her) is sick. Very sick. She’s had kidney disease for the past several years, and it has progressed to End stage in the past couple of months. In the past two weeks she has degraded greatly. She also has arthritis in her spine, and she has a hard time walking. Pretty much all she’s been doing is eating and sleeping, but she was getting some joy from going outside and sitting in the sun.

Erin talked to the vet yesterday, and they decided that Sneaker’s quality of life was just not there anymore. Emotionally, I want to think this is not true, that there are still things she enjoys, but logically, I know that it’s not really true. Besides, she has a hard time walking without being drugged up on kitty narcotics. At this point, prolonging the inevitable would be more for us than for Sneakers. So we’ve decided to bring her in to be put to sleep this afternoon.

I stayed over at Erin’s last night, so I could spend as much time as possible with her. I bought her some raspberries, one of her favorite foods, and she enjoyed some of those last night. But I can also tell that there is a definite lack of spark there. She’s still Sneakers, but she’s missing the vibrancy that was always a key part of her cat personality.

Even though I haven’t lived with her for the past two years, I felt happy knowing she was around, and that I could see her on occasion. I am going to miss her a lot.

Really, is there any better way to celebrate the 4th of July than Rock Band with friends? Especially when it is foggy as crud in SF so the fireworks would be just lighted fog.