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.