Memories of Grendel

When you lose someone close, you are left with a space in your heart. However, we're lucky to have something to fill that space with: our memories.

On Friday, October 16, 2009, Grendel died. She was our dog of 14 years, longer than my wife and I had been married, older than any of our kids. She had been struggling with cancer for a while and was not doing well. She no longer has those pains and struggles and is now at peace.

Here are some of the memories that I have that fill her space in my heart.

• When we first got her, Grendel would chew shoes, only Heather's shoes and only one of the pair.
• When she was young, Grendel would also do this leg humping thing, which was ironic as she was a spayed female. It probably wasn't the best of things for a dog owner to let their dog do, but we all thought it was funny. She even clawed a hole in my jeans more than once with her dew claws.
  
• At a Christmas party in Missouri, Sam Robinson shared some Kahlua with her. She liked it. A lot. And then she peed in his lap.
• She was always a small, compact dog. Ron Gouvaia would call her Santa's Little Helper, more so I think because he was a fan of the Simpsons, than she beared resemblence to the Simpson's dog.
• Grendel sometimes peed in our apartment above Peoples' Park in Berkeley. I'd clean/cover it with vinegar. This resulted in the statement, "Dog's don't belong in apartments," from my college room mate and friend Erik Muller. I'm glad you let her anyways, thank you.
  
• Grendel was afraid of water, regardless of the size of the body of water. When ever we'd go to the beach, she'd stand with her back to the ocean. She'd never look at the ocean. Whenever I go to the beach and don't keep a watchful eye on the ocean, I'd get smashed by a wave. She never got close enough to be smashed.
• When we moved to Washington from the Bay Area, I drove with Grendel and Sebbie. I was prepared to drive all the way to Portland without stopping, where I was meeting a friend for dinner. The dogs, however, were not ready to that far and I had to stop twice to let them pee. Then, because I still made great time, when we got to the Seattle metropolitan area, we didn't really have a place to stay. Heather called all kinds of hotels to find some place we could stay with the dogs. We ended up in an extended stay hotel in Sea-tac. I was glad the dogs were with me for safety; the cops all had AR-15's, it was that kind of a neighborhood.
• When we were in California, Grendel would always lay outside in the sun. Maybe it was her downfall, but she always looked so peaceful sleeping in the sunny spots.
• We got Grendel at the Safeway on College Avenue in Oakland. It was a last chance adoption push, because the dogs were going to be put to sleep the next day. Later, when we returned to the Bay Area, I worked right down the street from this Safeway and it was always a nice memory.
• After dinner, when I was loading the dishwasher, Grendel would always come and see what scraps she could find there. Though I'd never feed her people food from the table, I always looked the other way when she did that. Then when I was emptying the cleaned dishes, she'd always come to check if there was anything left for her to snack on.
• As she grew older, she'd hang out with me. I work from home, so she'd always be around. Grendel would sleep in the office, on the couch or under the desk. I've gotten into the habit of keeping my legs very still while I sit, because I learned to not suddenly stretch because I'd kick her under the desk.
• She'd follow me around. When I wrapped up for the day and would come out of my home office, she would to. When I'd come home from school at night, she'd follow me around, waiting for me to go upstairs to bed. Many times, when I had several things to do when I got home, she'd even follow me back and forth as I'd go from the office to the kitchen to the family room and back again. But then, when I'd go upstairs to bed, so would she.

Some of my friends have shared a few memories and I'll put them here, too:

David Hickman, another friend from college wrote: "I fondly remember Grendel from Berkeley. I recall she used to always bark at cops."

Orit Aizenman Daly, also from college, remembers, "her as a puppy being walked by Heather pregnant with Alec."

Thanks for sharing those memories, because they help fill the space in my heart too.

I miss you, Grendel, but you'll always be in my heart.

Changing lightbulbs with Kid 3

Yesterday, I was outside with Kid 3, changing some lightbulbs (stay with me, the story gets cute). He was opening the lightbulb packs and I was actually putting the lightbulbs in. While we were outside, the girls across the street were out putting up a few Haloween decorations.

As we finished up, he suggested that it was time to put up decorations. Heather is big on seasonal decor and it really is her thing, so I said to him, "Mom'll get it soon."

But he decided that he should make ghosts to hang from the tree. He found some tennis balls then wrapped them in 3 paper towels.

It was quite cute. And today, Heather has decorated the house, i'm sure pics will be coming.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Making funny faces

My wife makes funny faces while she's at her computer. I think that its quite cute and over the years, I've learned to interpret her facial expression to let me know what she's doing. Sorry, there are no pictures of these faces, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Big cute grin
When my wife is blogging or, more importantly, responding to comments on her blog, she has a big cute smile. Its one of those smiles that just makes me happy when ever I see her with that face on. I like to ask her what she's doing when she's making this face, as its obvious that she is happy. Keep the comments coming over on her blog.

Concentrating face
When my wife is composing an email for swimteam car pool or PTSA volunteering or something like that, she is concentrating hard. Her lips are pressed together, thinning them to almost a line. She looks very stern - and knowing some of the car pool coordination problems she deals with, she should be. I'm learning to not disturb her when she's making this face. Its sort of like the headphones worn by cube workers to say Do Not Disturb.

Concerned face
This is a new face that I observed this morning (and which instigated this post). Her brow was furled, but she was intently watching her computer screen, only looking away when scooping more oatmeal from her bowl. I asked her what she was doing and it turns out she was watching Fringe on Hulu. The particular episode was about mutants and they were conducting an exhumation. She doesn't like shows about mutants in the same way that our daughter doesn't like zombies.

Writing this made me think of one other face she makes. She probably won't want me to write about this one (and get your head out of the gutter). Its her Focused Physical Concentration face. When she's doing something that requires a great deal of focus, like threading a needle or using a jewler's screwdriver, she sticks the tip of her tongue out of her mouth, just a little bit off center. This is another face that says Do Not Disturb lest I break her concentration.

This is not a strange phenomenon, as I do the same thing. Heather can tell when I'm in pain, as I have my pain face. I'm sure we all have faces that we make? What are yours?

The End of Summer is near

My summer vacation (from my MBA) is drawing to a close. Work is picking up pace again and classes start next week. While I was on vacation, I was able to do a few things which I enjoyed and are worth writing the "what I did on my summer vacation" post.

I wrote earlier that I had set up some Ubuntu servers and I have established them as backup servers for all of the computers at home. I replaced the 40 GB disk with a 1 TB disk and now can backup all of the data on my wife and kids' computers and have some room for future expansion. While it was quite easy to do, I had to swap disks, not add a new one, as the case only has space for one hard disk.

I've written some scripts for both linux and windows XP to backup user's data. I'm sure that there are a billion of these on the internet, but let me know if you are interested and I'll share them with you.

I'd really put in a plug for installing CygWin on a Windows machine as rsync is much more configurable and provides better feedback than the Windows backup tool. And it provides a little more flexibility in what you can do with the files once they are on the backup server.

I was also able to get two day hikes in, one with my family and one with a Meetup group. It was great to get into the outdoors, take some photos and just enjoy the views. We went on one day hike to Denny Creek and as a family then I went to Tolmie Peak at Mount Rainier National Park with the Meetup group.

I'm glad I was able to get those in, because its so hard to do stuff on the weekends during school with team meetings, homework and swim meets. I'm looking forward to the snow this winter and really want to get a snow camping trip in this winter. Don't get sick, Wade!

I'm on vacation today and Heather and I are figuring out what we're going to do for our upcoming anniversary. It'll be quite nice to have some relaxing alone time with her.

That's all for now!

"Special" breakfast

For some reason, my wife has been thinking about Spam a lot. Not the musical, but thinking a lot about Spam. She had said that she wonders if it still takes like she remembers from when she was a kid.

So, while I was out picking up movies at Blockbuster, I stopped by the grocery store and picked up a can of Spam. I was surprised that I was able to find Spam at QFC, since they try to be a little more high fa-luting than other stores, but then sadden that I was only able to find Lite, Turkey and Classic, but no smoked.
As I thought about how to prepare it for her, I've always been intrigued by Spam in Raisin sauce, but she hates raisins. So, I thought I'd make a special breakfast. I thought about crumbling it into scrambled eggs, but that wouldn't showcase the Spam itself. So, I made egg Spam-wiches!

Butter milk biscuits, with a poached egg and a slice of fried Spam. Mmm, delicious.

Often, I under season the food. To make sure, I checked that box, I sprinkled pepper on the eggs before serving. There was plenty of salt from the Spam.
To maximize the effect, I didn't allow any one in the kitchen to ruin the surprise of Spam. I had them all sit at the table, eyes closed, and brought out the serving plate. The were pleasantly surprised alright.

Making Ice Cream... Bacon Ice cream.

This isn't a post about work, I actually blog very little about work, but as disclosure, I do work for Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream. I enjoy cooking (and eating) very much and find it relaxing. And tasty. So, this summer, in a bit of my free time, I've made a few batches of ice cream.

I've seen all kinds of crazy things online that people will do with bacon and decided that I would make some bacon ice cream. I figured that chocolate covered bacon would be a nice combination of salty and sweet and maybe I could even slip it past unsuspecting family members.

So my daughter and I fried up some bacon, melted some chocolate and made some ice cream a few weeks ago. It actually turned out quite well and not as weird as it sounds!

And for those that don't believe it, Heather said, "Mmmm. I like it. I like the bacony taste at the end" and Chase said, "It's sweet and smokey at the same time. "

My daughter and I took photos while we made the bacon ice cream, you can see the full set on Flickr.

Again, in full disclosure, I was asked to make some "more normal flavors" for my subsequent batches and I made some mint chip ice cream a few days later. The mint chip has been fully consumed, but there is still some bacon ice cream in our freezer. But its still good.

My most recent two batches were black raspberry ice cream. We had some neighbors that were moving away and our street was going to have a casual gathering to wish them well. My wife and I collaborated and she made a pound cake and I made ice cream to go on top and it was quite good!

Photo from Heather

For those looking for recipes, I kinda broke out on my own for each of them, though they were loosely based on recipes from Williams-Sonoma Mint Chip and Ben and Jerry's Raspberry ice creams. I recommend both the Williams-Sonoma ice cream book and the Ben and Jerry's ice cream books, as they have lots of great recipes.

I'm not dead...

My wife mentioned last night that my last blog entry was in May. I knew it had been a while, but I didn't realize that it had been that long. Sure, I make updates on twitter, but 140 characters a few times a day just isn't the same as a full blown blog posting.

So, this blog will be a summary of what I've done since the middle of May and hopefully, I can turn some of the entries here into more postings. I do wish I'd write more, as keeping a journal keeps the mind sharp.

For the first few weeks after my messenger bag was stolen, I had a loaner laptop from work. It was a beater - the screen frame was cracked on both sides and it ran hot. Sure, it was a laptop and got me by, but it just wasn't the same. Thank goodness for my backup and documents in the cloud, I was able to continue work and finish out the quarter for school.

When the school quarter ended, I was officially on summer break. Being in an Evening MBA program, that really means that I was back to just working as the draw on my time. I've been trying hard, and not often succeeding, to not replace my school time with work time and actually enjoy some of my free time.

With both the kids and me on vacation, we had house guests at the end of June. My wife's sister and brother and some portion of their families came to visit. We did some of the touristy things around Seattle. The weather was excellent for their visit and the day we were on Alki Beach, the Light House was open for tours. It's not open often, so we were lucky to be able to check it out. We went to Mount Rainier and had another beautiful day there - it was one of those perfect days when the skies are clear and you can see all around. The new visitor center was open and there was still snow on the ground at Paradise. The bad thing was that it was so bright: clear day, snow to reflect the sunlight and I'd not yet replaced my sunglasses. Thanks to Heather for the picture.

The kids' year round swimming season concluded and the summer recreational season occurred during the month of June and July. Again the kids did very well, both with swimming and just peforming at swim meet after swim meet. Kid 1 and 2 both qualified for Pacific Northwest Swimming Champs and Kid 1 had the highest cumulative points at all dual for the summer league and broke a club record! They're great swimmers and its a good thing considering how much time we spend at pools.

We've had a number of car related issues, number one being the break-in (after a swim meet). Someone let the air out of two of my tires (at a swim meet), which I did not realize until I was several miles away on the freeway with two totally thrashed tires. I'd decided to replace the MINI's runflats with non-runflat tires, for performance and cost reasons, and this was the worst case scenario with not having a spare. The tires wouldn't take air (I did have a compressor) and so it required a flatbed to carry the MINI to the tire shop. It took far longer than it needed to, as the insurance company's roadside assist couldn't find a flatbed they had contracted with. You can read what Heather had to say about it. The final car issue (note to Fate, I said it was the final one) was that my wife was crashed into in a parking lot (after a swim meet). We're still dealing with the damage caused by the uninsured driver, but we're finding (and has been the case n all of the dealings this summer) that our insurance company, USAA, is pretty good.

While my car was in the shop (new tires and some engine work), I worked from a few coffee shops in Seattle and had some great picnics with my family. We went to Greenlake Park one day for lunch and then dinner at the famed Dick's Drive In (Again, hanks to Heather for the picture.).

It was cool to go to Dick's because Sir Mix-A-Lot sang about it. It was cool to eat dinner at the park with my family and play tag and watch the hoola hoopers. But Dick's was not a good burger. Or fries.

To make things right, the next day, lunch was at Red Mill Burgers and was much better.

I'm still replacing my stolen things, but I'm getting there. As you can see by the photo credits, most of the photos here were taken by Heather. I've not yet replaced my camera and the iPhone, while a great phone, is only a mediocre camera.

I've continued to use Ubuntu, and have added some computers to our network. Now my backups are more robust and I can actually backup or get my files from anywhere I'm connected to the Internet. I've been learning about nfs and running a server. There are a few more fun pictures of my computers and Ubuntu on my flickr account.

Rancid released another album at the beginning of July. I really like punk and really like the fact that Rancid sings so much about the East Bay and Berkeley where I did my undergrad studies. Kid 1 and I went to their concert when they came to Seattle and had a fun, though he fell asleep during the show (two long swim practices in the morning don't make a late night easy). It was fun to debate whether or not this was his first real concert - I still maintain that American Idol on tour just doesn't count.

I've not done a lot of cooking lately, but I did make two batches of ice cream recently. I made a sweet cream and chocolate covered bacon ice cream and a mint chip ice cream (I needed to make some thing more normal tasting) and they've both been quite refreshing with the weather we've been having lately.

Thats all for now, there are several things that I'd like to expound upon here and make full blown posts out of and I'll try to get to that later. I hope you are enjoying your summer too!