Been remiss in thanking my sister for the best-looking cookies ever. In my defense, I just finished with my gift to her -- hosting our mom for two months. [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
Slowly waiting to be unstuffed following our first Thanksgiving in our home. Wanted to put on one of our own since we got our expandable dining room table. This year worked our perfectly because my mother is in town, alternately staying with us and adventuring on her own or with her friend.
Stuck to the traditional dishes this year, including real mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, fresh cranberry sauce, spoon bread, dressing, ambrosia, Tofurkey, and, because we're so generous, real turkey.
Required quite an exertion of willpower to cook and carve that turkey without sneaking a taste. Unlike some vegetarians, I have not developed a revulsion towards meat. But our mothers enjoyed it, so it was worth the effort. Need to come up with a better way to serve everything hot, but otherwise our first Thanksgiving hosting went off like clockwork. [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
My busy fall agenda is still far from complete. but it's almost certain the absolute highlight will be deemed to be our trip out to San Francisco to visit my cousin Janty and her family before their migration to Germany. Met her daughter Kinley for the first time in person, after missing a couple other opportunities. Her husband Shane is a good man and I thinks he's taking care of my cousins. Really excited for them (though I'm sure my cousin will be freezing the whole time).
After a few weeks of meandering in a malaise, I'm finally coming up on big family events which until now have entailed hospital visits.
Locally and immediately, Tanya's father and uncle are in the area following their mother's recent injury. We'll also be meeting up with a couple of friends for events, including the Rally to Restore Sanity (or March to Keep Fear Alive). (http://sumocat.blogspot.com/2010/09/rally-for-sanity-or-march-for-fear-i.html)
Later, we'll be in San Francisco to spend time with my closest cousin and her family, followed by a close friend's wedding back here. My mother will be with us for both of these. Feeling pretty excited about it all, especially coming off a fairly rotten week. Maybe it'll kick me into spilling ink more frequently. [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
Very sad news for the Tablet PC community arrived today. A man I was proud to recognize as a fellow enthusiast and insightful thinker, Loren Heiny, passed away after years of battling cancer. I typed out my thoughts earlier to share with the GottaBeMobile community, but the only proper way for me to honor Loren is in ink.
As a software developer, he strived to improve the Tablet PC experience, such as with his InkGestures software, and pushed it across platforms, as seen with his inking in Firefox experiments. He never gave up on the platform, and looking back at some of the things I wrote about him, it's amazing how insightful he was about the industry and where it was going. It is a terrible shame he won't be with us to enjoy the next generation of tablets to follow, which we surely saw coming.
[We never met in person, something I regret, but I felt a real kinship with Loren. Our perspectives on the tablet scene were very parallel. We never collaborated on anything, but time and again, we came to the same conclusions even when coming from different directions. On the odd occasion when I disagreed with him, his logic still proved solid and usually superior. How insightful was he? He claimed the iPhone platform was moving us toward a new generation of tablets and that a big iPod touch would prove a huge success -- that was two years ago. It is unfortunate he was only able to see these first steps come to fruition and won’t be here for the true next-gen Tablet PCs he dreamed would follow. Loren was truly a thinker and visionary. He and his beautiful thoughts will be missed.] [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
So as I mentioned briefly (http://sumocat.blogspot.com/2010/05/ink-blogging-from-phl-parking-lot.html), I was in Philadelphia for a couple of days. My friend Lawrence was in town for a race and stopped in a day early so we could hang out and take in the sights. Got to see the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and the U.S. Mint, but half our time was spent catching up.
Also took the opportunity to test some equipment I'm evaluating. Have some good data to share but no time to organize it. Still catching up with work due to my days off. This entry was written on a Fujitsu Lifebook T900 Tablet PC (http://store.shopfujitsu.com/fpc/Ecommerce/buildseriesbean.do?series=T900) with pen + multi-touch. [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
Had a bit of a scare earlier this year, but everything worked out so we can celebrate another Homer Day (http://sumocat.blogspot.com/search/label/Homer%20Day). Our baby Homer is two years old today, which translates into 24 human years based on biological development. Happy Homer Day to all, and special shout-out to James Kendrick and his great birthday news (http://twitter.com/jkendrick/status/12669292153). Happy Newt Day! [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
I almost regret not buying an iPad now, if only to make this classic "everyone and his brother" joke work. Turns out I don't have one but my brother does. Hopefully it'll be too big to lose, unlike his iPhones. [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
Well, he's not back to his fully happy self yet, but we're happy Homer's home and urinating on his own. Doing a lot of napping as he recovers, but when he perks up, he's back to his old self, except for not being able to groom himself. Oh, he is normally so fastidious. [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
Plan was to bring Homer home tonight, but his urine is still not flowing freely. Quite frankly, I don't think the docs really know what's wrong with him, but we'll see. [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
Well, unfortunately, Homer's urinary problem (http://sumocat.blogspot.com/2010/01/homer-in-hospital.html) has returned so we're moving forward with surgery. Alternative is to hope dietary solutions finally take, but they haven't yet. Could be worse; another cat at the hospital suffered two blocks in a matter of days. Hoping for the best. [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
Knowing his love for cameras, I sent some photos of one of my sister's latest cakes, a Canon 40D camera, over to Xavier at GBM. He loved them so much he had to post them on the blog (http://www.gottabemobile.com/2010/02/25/tasty-dslr-camera-cake). Thought I'd do the same with my favorite from the batch. Check it out: it's Appa from Avatar the Last Airbender (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar:_The_Last_Airbender) [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
Year is shaping up to be quite stressful and it's only January. So the latest event was Homer's health scare (http://sumocat.blogspot.com/2010/01/homer-in-hospital.html). He's back home recovering now, but we've got a lot of medication to administer and he's squeezing out urine left and right. Causing blood pressure to rise around here. However, the important thing is he's passing it through his system and should be back to normal soon (and that can't happen soon enough). [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
Our littlest cat Homer was acting oddly this morning, disappearing at breakfast. He ate well enough when he showed up, but following a hunch, Tanya put him in the litter box to see his reaction. He assumed his usual position, sitting upright with his front paws on the edge of the box, but nothing happened. We determined he had a urinary block, which requires immediate action, so off to the vet we went.
Homer was drained and is recovering at the hospital tonight through tomorrow. He looked awfully miserable in the cage through, all doped up. Barely seemed to recognize us, but he sure looked sad when we left. Definitely need to treat him right when we bring him home. [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
My sister's been continuing her cake rampage. Her latest is a steak dinner, complete with a baked potato and peas & carrots. Looks good enough to eat... except I've cut sweets out of my diet in addition to meat. Sucks to be me. [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
Okay, I guess I can't make that claim with any real authority. Not like I've seen every Hello Kitty (http://annieaiko.xanga.com/709357503/new-birthday-cakes-update/?nextdate=last&leftcmt=1) cake ever made. But I did go as far as searching Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Hello%20Kitty%20cake&w=all&s=int) for Hello Kitty cakes. Found a few that were similar, but not as good, and none scored the extra points of having her hold a present and candles.
Awesome job, sister! you need to show this off to the HK fans. They will hail you as their new cake queen, not counting those who hate you for putting their cakes to shame. Such is the price of awesomeness. [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
My tiny canine brother Max passed away this week. My mom still insists he's my sister's dog, but he was my mom's. Once his name entered the rotation of the names my mom calls us kids, he became one of us. He was a happy little dog to the end. Bye Max. [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
Mom and I are taking a break to journal, she on paper and I on my Tablet PC, after enjoying tea with my mother-in-law. Nice to unwind, especially since it being Sunday also affords me a respite from job-related stuff. Been tracking our adventures with geo-tagged photos from my iPhone and untagged snaps from our other camera. Posting samples on Rambles and vocal round-ups on Notes to Self. Digging my jaunt into mobile blogging this week. [+/-] Hide/Show Text [+/-] Hide/Show Text
