logloglog

Even though it was quite cold I got so warm from hiking in a forest near Tully (South of Syracuse) that I opened up my armpit zippers and put my arms through it. It looks silly, like I have four arms, but it was quite practical too cool off a bit.

On our way to celebrate American Thanksgiving with Alison’s family in upstate New York, we stop for a hike in a bird sanctuary just North of the Canadian-American border. Alison wanted to see migrating birds flock on the banks of the Saint Lawrence river, but the only migrating birds we saw were high up in the sky, dashing South and thus fleeing the upcoming Canadian winter. We saw some small birds, that we fed some of our cashew nuts. Since the nuts were way too big for them to handle we pre-chewed them, just like birds do when they feed their chicks. They didn’t eat out of our mouth though!

Our planned hike wasn’t a big success either. The hiking paths were all flooded because of the high water level, and the ice on the water was not yet strong enough to support our weight. So after trying all possible entries we returned to our car. On the deserted parking lot I gave Alison her first ever driving lesson. I had her making some figure-of-8 turns and shift gear and she did quite well.

Then we saw a deer crossing the road a bit further away, and we changed seats and I drove up to it. A foal fawn joined its mother and even when I got out of the car to take a picture they just stared at me from maybe 3 metres away.

For her work Alison needs to wear pantyhoses (I still sometimes call it panties, because that’s the Dutch word for it. Wrong!). However it doesn’t look very nice if you see dark hairs (and Alison has dark hairs) through them. So she regularly gets her legs waxed. In order to save some money I today tried to wax Alison’s legs myself. The results exceeds both our expectations. What certainly helps is that Alison is the person with the highest pain tolerance that I know. She didn’t even wince once. I already almost cry when I remove a band-aid. Her high tolerance helps me with doing this too. If she would show how painful it is (and believe me, it is painful) I probably couldn’t have done it at all. The sadist in me is not very well developed. I might sometimes hate her, but tonight was not one of these times.

My best friend got a baby. Well, actually another friend of mine got a baby, together with her girlfriend. But my best friend was their sperm donor, so he deserves to have a little party himself.

I sent both of them this card. Fortunately they both share my kind of humour, so they both appreciated it very much.

His name is Kiran and he is a very big baby. Four and a half kilogram, if I’m well informed.

Congratulations to the two mothers and the father!

It’s getting colder and today we had our first day of snow that didn’t immediately melt. So a good day to protect our house against the harsh elements. The kitchen is our coldest room, because it has a door to the garden and a window that is a bit leaky and drafty. Last year I installed a piece of plastic in front of it, basically sealing it of completely. It’s a kit you buy (it was hard to find though) and it consists of a roll of thin plastic and double sided tape. You attach the double sided tape to the window frame, press the plastic more or less straight on it and then you use a hair blower to get rid of the creases. The plastic is of a special kind and it shrinks when it gets warm. Even if you don’t have a hair-blower, like us, but use a little space heater instead it works fabulous. It’s virtually invisible and it keeps the kitchen much warmer.

So this year I did it again and the result was even better than last year.

I only forgot one thing. Can you spot it in this picture?

Alison and I had a big fight today so tonight I’m sleeping on the fold out bed in the guest room. Tomorrow we’ll probably make it up again but these fights are exhausting for both of us. Still they keep happening. Alison is stressed, I’m stressed and before we know it we attack each other. Only verbally, but still…

We’re working on it with a counsellor, but it’s still early and so far we have made little progress.

In the winter, when we go for walks in the snow, Poupoune gets snow between her toes. Often this snow turns into ice which hurts her and she sometimes even starts bleeding. To prevent this from happening she has to wear socks over her paws, but we tried that but she always gets rid of them in no-time. She can’t stand the feeling of something around her paws, she even gets very grumpy if you touch her paws with your hand. But now we try to desensitise her by having her wear these doggy socks every day for 5 minutes. After that we take them off and she gets a special treat. Even after only a couple of days it seems to work: She is less nervous, doesn’t constantly try to shed them and even walks on her feet, without holding at least one leg, and sometimes two, in the air. Maybe when she really needs them, when the big snow arrives, she is actually ready to wear those pesky socks.

Poupoune is not feeling well. She stays very close to me, so close that once I run over her tail with my chair on castors. At the end of the day I here here vomiting. But instead of the small vomits she once in while leaves behind, this one was a gigantic pile of sick. When I made a picture of it –since I didn’t want you all to miss this– Pepe immediately started to eat it, but I locked him up in the kitchen and then cleaned it up. Even my grossness tolerance has its limits.

(This is a bit geeky. You can also just skip this and jump to the next paragraph.)
As I wrote here earlier, I had a lot of problems with my laptop. A couple of months ago the hard drive started to fail, so I got a new one because when I bought the PowerBook, I also bought an extended warranty of three years. Then the S-Video port, that we use to watch, ehrm. downloaded videos, on out TV stopped working. Another trip to the repair centre and a couple of weeks later -yes, this repair process usually takes very long, since all parts have to be ordered from Apple in the US, during which Alison and I share her aging computer- they handed me back my PowerBook with a new motherboard. Unfortunately this “new” motherboard (which was probably not new but so-called refurbished, taken out another machine) had some other problems. It didn’t see my external screen so I couldn’t use that, and it also stopped noticing when I inserted my camera’s memory card in the card reader. But is was two weeks before I went to Europe and I didn’t want to take the risk of not having it back yet. So I wrote the repair shop what was wrong and that I would hand the machine in when I came back. And so I did. But this time the repair took longer than usual. I called and they told me that they were waiting on another motherboard but that Apple had no idea when it would arrive. After a couple of weeks (after which I really hated Alison’s slow and unstable computer) I called again and the ETA for the part was still not known. But they suggested me to call Apple directly because I could complain and they couldn’t. And so I did.

After spending lots of time with a tech support guy and on hold (with awful music, as if they don’t have a music store full of nice tracks…) , he connected me with someone from Apple Customer Relations. This guy said they still have no idea when the new motherboard will arrive, and that this was all taking too long. And so he offered to exchange my 3-year old machine with a brand new 1.67 GHz Alu Powerbook with DVD writer, bigger screen and faster video card! It was an offer i couldn’t refuse. Of course I have to buy new memory and new battery packs (I have three) but I’m not complaining. It also means I can hold off buying one of the new MacTel units, and wait until they are stable.

I just exchanged the machines, because it arrived much sooner that they had told me, and it is indeed really, really fast. I transferred my old data (still plenty of room on the much bigger hard drive), re-installed some utilities, and now I’m bragging about it on my log. Yay!

(BTW, sane people call it aluminium.)