Cat lit by backyard fire

I felt like I was coming down with a cold today. Soar chest, shaking, unable to warm up. It subsided late in the day, but the result is that I did pretty much nothing of value today. I tried to read but just couldn't kick my brain into gear. This evening Margaret lit a back yard fire. The cat walked back and forth on the fence. She never seems particularly concerned about what we do. 

Dirty Cat

Don't know what she's been doing, but when I got home my cat was dirtier than I've ever seen her.
Worked with Geremy this afternoon, trying to figure out lenses. We went to my my optometrist and got a bit of help and context, but still somewhat stuck. Geremy should be updating the wiki soon (http://camera-obscura.wikispaces.com/home). 

Sylvie at the vet

We`ve been worried that our cat has ear mites again, having seen a build up of ear wax recently. A trip to the vet yesterday assured us that while she is over weight and needs her remaining teeth brushed more often, she is fine. If a cat has ear mites, it will scratch constantly at its ears, which Sylvie has not been doing. 

Still tipsy

I still felt tipsy this morning and took until mid afternoon to get back to normal. Lots of advil helped. The grad students started doing presentations and I had a production committee meeting and had a meeting the school later on. We also went and bought a new stainless steel wok and a ceramic frying pan. This evening Paul came over and we had a round of Carcassonne. 

cute cat photo

I hope that you like this cute cat photo because we all know that cute cat photos are be cutest thing that cat lovers like to love, especially when they are funny and playful and cute and have cats that are cute in them.

long weekend

We are going to a Thanksgiving due tomorrow, today was mostly a work day. Margaret's mother Gertrud came over yesterday and today to help re-putty the storm windows. I scraped old paint off and cleaned them after the puttying. I'm shocked by what a poor job I did at painting them last week but the conditions were very poor and I was very rushed. At least I got a first coat on them. The putty job will take at least one more long day, maybe two.
This morning I worked with William to help him shoot his One Take Super 8 film which he is calling "Sylvie Bingles Lego and the Jet Pack". We still have to do the soundtrack but I have a plan for that which should be cool. Margaret spent much of the day baking pies and, her new passion, bread. I wonder what sort of madness is required to be a baker as many of the bread recipes I see contain food that just shouldn't be eaten (things have have soured or formented or just about rotted seem in order only there).

ich habe einen kater

I think I've picked up a bad case of cat head.
The long awaited new Lego Bionicle movie: "The Legend Reborn" came out today. I picked it up first thing this morning and William watched it twice after school. I caught it the second time. It was all right although at times it was quite sloppy. Two scenes in particular bothered me. In one, the main character is in a cavern of ancient technology and triggers a gateway to open. He is surprised and jumps back. The scene then cuts to the group of characters 2/3 of the way down the stairway with the opening far behind them. Where was the moment of nervous first steps into the darkness? Cutting room floor? Later when two of the heroes have been captured the same main character declares that he will go alone to rescue them and the other heroes must stay behind to protect the villagers. He then turns and exits amid musical cues that lead us to believe his new mission is under way. Cut to him standing on a hill side watching the sun set and one of the characters from the previous scene walks up behind him and says "I thought I'd find you here" and they have a chat about the likely position of the hostages. Very obtuse. All the key creatives had European names. All the actual animators were Asian. I sense some major disconnects in the production.

William finished reading the 760 page "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" this evening. He started it on July 9 and has now started the sixth book.

New family again!!!

The catfish has been out of sorts the last few days. I think it is a combination of him being overfed and being lonely. We stopped feeding him and today he started being active again, proving this to be in part true (he was always very active when he was hungry then docile after eating). This evening we bought two swordtails and he is much happier and active already. They require warm water, which is something he likes as well, so I also got a heater. Cowtown had one that was much cheaper than the others because it was some random shipment they weren't supposed to get (fell off the back of a tanker from China?), so it was six bucks instead of thirty. The fish cost three dollars each so not a big investment but certainly worth the extra over the 49 cent goldfish if they manage to live more than a month.

Sylvie the cat is also doing great. She is a bit insecure about being apart from us which is fine since that means she doesn't wander far when we let her off her leash. She's still mostly an indoor cat but she likes being outside with us and she climbs the treehouse and goes under the porch and deck (she's only 1/5 the size of the old cat so can go amazing places).

Shawn Fulton

I met up with Shawn Fulton in a park this afternoon and we recorded over an hour of an interview in preparation for an article I want to write about his really cool super-8 films. William and Sylvie also came. Sylvie climbed a tree very well, limited only by her leash. William bumped his head and cursed the planet for his pain and hoped that we crash into the sun. He really didn't cheer up until we were at grandmas and got some new Lego (Indiana Jones Jungle Cutter). We all went over to Ed/Faith/Marin/Rowan's house and they hosted a bar-b-que and made it a bit of a surprise party for William. We stayed rather late but there's an even louder party next door so it won't be an early night anyways. Sylvie has started being more playful, probably because she is becoming more comfortable here but probably also because she is de-wormed and de-ear-mited. She has some sort of fur covered ball that she goes nuts for.

no space

We spent the better part of this morning at the vet with Sylvie. She weighs 1.4 kg and had more mite infested gunk in her ears than I would have believed possible. She also needed a de-worming pill, ointment in her eyes, and other orifices probed. We were able to test some other cat foods and found some things that she likes (Science Diet is current favorite). She seems to have forgiven us for her hour of hell and is likely able to hear much better now.
I spent the afternoon working on my scores for Modern and trying to prepare notes for my next Splice Magazine article and this evening watching the first two "Back to the Future" movies with William.

First day back to school

Today was William's first day back at school. He started grade 3 with a teacher who is new to the school and is in a grade 3/4 split. In the morning we all walked to school together, including the cat so his friends could see her. We have a leash and harness for the cat so she can go for walks with us. I think she's nervous about the outside so maybe she'll be more of an indoor cat. We got to the school a minute or two after the bell so most kids didn't see her, but we'll try again. William seems to have enjoyed his day.
I had a good meeting with Janine and reviewed the 9 short videos she has made that interconnect as her MFA project. Really starting to work. Strangely, she is pulling farther and farther away from the shockingly violent aspects of the stories and gravitating towards small anactotes.

The cat we got yesterday, Sylvie, is really small. She's apparently 5.5 months old but is not much bigger than a kitten and some people have pointed out that she should be bigger. She won't eat the dry cat food that they were giving her at the Humane Society but is really hungry. I am suspecting that she was surviving on the small amount of wet food they gave each cat as a treat in the morning. She ate a lot of raw beef and chicken today. Last night she slept with, and sometimes on top of, William. She is with him now.

...and MORE family

Here is the new addition to our family: Sylvie, an orange female cat about 5 months old adopted from the Humane Society. She is exploring the house and didn't mind the car ride around town today. She is pretty quiet and purrs a lot. I've left it to William to decide if she is his cat or the family cat.