Getting Closer to the Move Here

So here we are, back in what we hope will be our new home. This time Vancouver is once again covered with many dark clouds, but instead of constant rain, it’s far more like Seattle rain, which has usually been light sprinkles interpersed with tantalizing patches of sunshine.

We landed and got through customs by about 3:00 Vancouver time, or 7 PM our body clock time. Pam had taken a slightly earlier plane than I did, so she picked up my bag and waited for me for about an hour and a quarter.
So, what do you do when you see a patch of blue in a week forecasted to be another monsoon? Get thee to the park, of course. We took a bus from more or less the center of town to Stanley Park, which was clearly wearing it’s spring outfit. We took a short walk and visited the edge of the aquarium, where Pam played with one of the seals, and we also saw some beautiful beluga whales, swimming like pale blue ghosts in their pond. We are going to spend a lot of time in that park. I can see making a park visit my weekly Sunday afternoon, and look forward to the day when I can hang out there with other family (my brother, sister-in-law and niece, for a start).

Today it was also partly cloudy, so after some arrangments for an interview with a recruiter, we took the Skytrain in a large loop to the East (went as far as Surrey, the end of the line), and then back again. Pam got off at the waterfront and I came back to our hotel.

I really like this hotel, the Sandman Suites on Davie. It has nearly everything I need in a hotel, including the most important luxury: a kitchen, complete with stove, pots and pans, dishwasher, utensils and plates! It’s also in a terrific neighborhood, full of restaurants, coffee shops and stores. So breakfast was home-cooked, and there was an organic grocer and 24-hour regular grocer within a 2 block area. Two doors down was a Starbucks for coffee grounds for our coffee-maker, and next store to that was a superb bakery. Pam chose a seed bread, which they sliced thing for us. It is wonderful. We also got organic salad, strawberries and plums. Today I picked up a truly magnificent papaya and some nice tangerines and tangelos.The hotel staff has also been extremely helpful and pleasant. I can see returning here for our next trip.

Besides being thrifty and healthy, this kitchen and bedroom setup really feels like we are starting to ‘live’ here, rather than act as pure tourists. Toward that end, we treated our skytrain trip as a sort of Real Estate tour, taking notes on what neighborhoods looked good, which high-rises were going up, where there self storage places are (and where the IKEA is). If I can just line up employment, I think we can look forward to a really nice life here. After all, what’s more to life than a pretty public park, fresh coffee, good bread and a high-speed Internet connection (albeit in the ‘business centre’ near the front desk) and cheap modern furniture? Please, dear reader, don’t answer that.

Let’s Get This Show On the Road

My friend in Vancouver, Matt points out that the name for the conference that I’m going to attend in Vancouver next week, Massive Tech Expo, is really akin to calling it The Best Conference Ever. I also suggested that a good name (with an homage to Woody Allen’s ‘What’s Up Tiger Lily’) is to call it Conference so Good It Would Make You Plotz (after the Chicken Salad Recipe from the aforementioned movie).

At any rate, here’s hoping that it’s going to be worth our while to fly across the continent mainly for one day of networking (although I hope to parlay that into some more than 12 hours). Whatever it is, I learned that not only will it once again be raining non-stop next week, but according to Matt (via IM), ‘February and March in general have been beautiful; maybe 3 rainy days in each.’. The only thing I can say to that is a hearty Homer Simpson ‘Doh!!’

Next stop, Vancouver…

Moving On

It’s Sunday, and Pam and I have been doing our best to get on with our lives after the loss of our beloved pet. It’s hard to predict when grief hits; sometimes it’s when we reenter the house on returning from shopping or a day trip to Pam’s brother and sister-in-law. Sometimes it’s the evening, upon finishing dinner.

A layer of sadness, like dust, covers us, but we are moving on. We’re getting ready for another trip to Vancouver, this time for me to do some job hunting and meeting with people (covered in an earlier post). Rather than stay home utterly alone, Pam luckily located a reasonably-priced flight and although we are once again not traveling together (will we ever again?), it’s not as ridiculous as last time, when she paid 4 times what I did due to changing plans at the last moment (her Uncle Jim dying the day before we were due to leave).

I’m looking forward to seeing our new home town without the usual constant rain, but so far it looks like we’re once again going to be in another 5-6 day deluge. I’ve got to admit that this has to be the worst luck I’ve ever had with any place with regard to weather, so I’m hoping we’re getting the clichés about the Pacific Northwest out of the way up front before we even move there. Otherwise, it’s going to be hard getting used to a place that never stops raining for all the months and years we might be living there. Some day it has got to stop raining in Vancouver, but perhaps that won’t happen until after we move. Talk about a leap of faith.

written while listening to: Mozart - String Quintet in G minor - ii. Menuetto. Allegretto from the album “String Ensembles” by The Orlando Quartet

Socrates

In my last entry I was afraid that I would be writing a eulogy soon for my cat Socrates. Sadly, this is the case.

We had to put Socrates to sleep yesterday. The growth that was obstructing his lower intestine was technically operable, but the operation would have involved some difficult and painful surgery, including breaking the poor animal’s pelvis in order to get at whatever was there. After much painful deliberation (especially because the seemingly normal cat we were visiting for the last time didn’t seem to be in any pain - yet), we decided that it would be cruel to put him through a procedure that would be challenging for a healthy young cat, and more importantly, would leave him with poor urinary function. With his poor heart and kidneys, he might not even have survived the operation.

Socrates was one of two cats that we got from a neighborhood litter shortly before we moved into our house. The litter parents brought the whole litter over to our house so that we could choose among them. One little cat snuggled on my knee, where he stayed for nearly the whole visit. The other cat (who would be called Steffi after one of Pam’s relatives) was chosen mainly because she seemed to be his playmate.

I liked to name cats with S’s in their names because I had heard that their hearing is well-attuned to the hissing of the ‘S’. As I said the previous entry, we really should have called him ‘Francis’ like the Saint, and his chattering sounds at the birds were a real delight to Pam.

While Steffi was a typical cat, aloof, quick to use her claws and fiercely loyal to us (and distrustful of strangers) Socrates was anything but that. As a neighbor (and sometimes cat-sitter) once put it: That cat’s a dog! Outgoing and vocal, Socrates was a constant companion to Pam and me, seeing us through good times and bad. When his sister died in 2001, he helped comfort us, and adjusted to being an ‘only child’ surprisingly well. He did give us a couple scares, and perhaps even lost one of his nine lives the time that he ended up under the floor for about 3 hours (in dreadful 90-degree heat) in the heating/air conditioning ductwork when a careless installer left the opening in the utility room uncovered. He was our soft, purring partner on the sofa for countless movies and episodes of ‘The Sopranos’, and never seemed to scold us when we returned from trips. He came down the stairs every day (again, like a dog), when I came home from work. Toward the end, we had to start calling him ‘Limpy’, because our poor arthritic kitty was having trouble negotiating all of those flights. He did get picky and needy as he grew older, demanding that he get brushed by Pam after breakfast, and refusing to drink any water that wasn’t coming out of the bathtub tap.

His absence leaves a gaping hole in our lives, and our once-homey cocoon of a townhouse now feels, as Pam says ‘Like a Hotel Room’.

A last anecdote that sums it up:
At the animal hospital where he spent his final few days, he was pretty much normal, so on what turned out to be his last night alive, they had a ’slow’ night. Since he was fine and they had time, they let him out to roam the waiting room and front desk area. I’m told that he was his usual charming and affectionate self, rubbing against all these strange people and purring. The tech said they all ‘bonded’ with him, and apparently there were many tears by the staff before we said our final good-byes. As I always said, he was the cat that everybody loved, even if they didn’t like cats.

So, to my little buddy, my little gray friend, muffin-head, bright-eyes, button, you’ll always be the cat who loved me back, not just as another acquaintance, but as a special friend, and that I’ll always cherish.

Sick Kitty

Although I haven’t mentioned him much in this blog, We have a cat with the historically but not personality-wise accurate name of Socrates. Socrates is not a philosopher-cat, and in retrospect, the proper name for him should have been Francis, as in St. Francis of Assisi, who was known to preach to the birds (and other animals). Socrates (the cat) talks to the birds, making that funny chattering noise that monkeys do.

Not today, though. Yesterday, our old friend of 13 1/2 years started crying and trying to use his litter box at 5:00 AM, and then every 15 minutes or so with no success. Without giving a complete medical history, he’s showing many of the signs of being an senior feline. He’s got a slightly irregular heart-beat, shrinking kidneys, and needs to drink water a great deal. He now only drinks water from the bathtub tap - a lab tech at the vet suggested that this is an instinctual preference for running water because in the wild waterfalls and brooks are usually cleaner and safer, hence more attractive to animals as they age and don’t have the resistance to the microbes in standing water. While I’ve never seen this in print, it makes a heck of a lot of sense. This need for so much water (probably due to not only the kidneys, but some mild diabetes) has an associated problem; when the body can’t get enough water externally, it begins to draw it from internal sources, like the colon. This contributes to (without mincing any words) hard stools. Combine this with less muscle tone, and our poor kitty can’t get his waste out of him. Add to this some swelling back there, and, well, you get the picture. Poor Socrates threw up all of his breakfast, and we took him to the vet about mid-morning. Then, after it wasn’t clear from X-rays what was exactly going on, he was going to need to be sedated for ultrasound, but the vet was closing at 4. On to the animal hospital, where Socrates’s sister Steffi spent her last hours back in 2001 (oh what a great year that was…).

Which brings us to today. He’s still there, and we’re going to visit him from 1 to 3. He’s going to be at the hospital overnight tonight as well, and hopefully ultrasound tomorrow (as well as multiple enemas - poor thing!) will tell us what to do next. I hope that I don’t have to prepare a eulogy for my little friend so soon, but I have to say that I have it in the back of my mind. I’ll stop now before I get more into that.