After the success of using Yellowstone as motivational carrot to to accomplish long-delayed car and hiking tasks, I turned my eyes toward the mess that had become my office. Stacks of unread mail and magazines threatened to topple over onto Scout in her heated bed. My pictures were scattered haphazardly across multiple hard drives, most with no backups. Most of the furniture no longer met my needs, and hadn’t for some time.

The second carrot? I bought a new TV. Perhaps I should explain.

I didn’t think to take before and after pictures, but the top picture gives a little view into the way things were. The picture is a quick snap of Sam with my iPhone, he normally ignores the TV but is rather obsessed with wolves and sits transfixed at my feet whenever they are on.

The TV is a 20″ CRT that I bought my junior year in college so it’s well over twenty years old. I felt the urge to upgrade to HDTV whenever the NFL season rolled around, the photographer in me loves loves loves high-resolution imagery, but I couldn’t justify the cost given the amount of TV I watch.

Below the TV sits the tape and CD players I got as high school graduation presents, putting them at over 25 years old. I haven’t used them in years, not since Mr. Steve Jobs and the good folks at Apple forever changed the way I listen to music with iTunes and the iPod. Below the stereo gear sits the digital-to-analog converter that converts the digital cable signal into an analog signal the old TV understands. Below that (and out of frame) lies the slowly dying TiVo that I inherited from my wife, while beneath them all sits the receiver I got my first year of grad school a touch over 20 years ago. So long ago that my address on the box it was shipped in was hand written by the mail order company I ordered it from.

The stand is a metal serving cart that my grandmother gave me when she learned I had nowhere to put the TV. To the right is an old printer stand that now holds DVD’s and magazines and mostly serves as a bird viewing platform for the cats when the window is open. To give you an idea of it’s age, the middle area was designed to hold a big ream of tractor-feed paper that fed into my dot matrix printer (that, at least, I no longer have).

To the left is a VCR tape cabinet even though I haven’t had a VCR for years. On top of it an original XBox that I used only briefly since the small TV wasn’t much fun to play games on. I used to use it as a DVD player but had long since stopped both because of the noisy fan and because I had to keep switching the connection to the sole input at the back of the TV with the TiVo, and that got old pretty quickly.

Off to the left and out of frame is a long and wide desk originally designed for the massive CRT’s we used way-back-when for picture editing, which also houses the aforementioned towering stacks of unread mail and a few cat beds and a scattered array of hard drives and computer gear.

In the middle of the room, and from whence I took the picture, sits my reclining chair which I dearly love. At only a decade old it’s one of the newer pieces of gear in my office and hopefully will last for years to come. It’s small and thin and fits well in my little office with plenty of room for me and Snuggle One and Snuggle Two (aka Scout and Sam), but not so much for the 65 pounds of Snuggle Three (aka Ellie).

In late October, Amazon put a nice 42″ Panasonic LED HDTV on a special one-day sale for a crazy low price. Two days later, a friendly UPS man brought it to my door. It’s not the TV you see in the picture below, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The new TV was too wide to fit on my grandmother’s old serving cart so it was finally retired from duty, and with it went all of the gear it I wasn’t using, plus its neighbors the printer stand and VCR tape cabinet. In its place, as shown in this picture (another quick iPhone snap, this time Sam and I enjoying a show about birds on the new gear), went an Ikea TV stand. Plus a new TiVo Premiere that can record in HD, and a Playstation 3 that serves up both high-def games and Blu-ray movies. Hidden out of sight is an 8-port gigabit router that feeds Internet connections to everything.

But this TV isn’t the one I bought from Amazon. My wife fell in love with that one so, when we saw Best Buy had a similar 42″ Panasonic plasma on sale for a good price, we picked one up while getting TV stands at the next-door Ikea. The plasma went into my office while the LED replaced the old CRT in hers.

I also took a good whack at the unread mail, I haven’t quite got through it all but Scout no longer fears for her life. The pictures on the hard drives are mostly organized and mostly backed up, the hard drives themselves now neatly arranged as well. Next up is to test out my old film scanner to see if it still works, if not the old PC I keep just to talk to it will walk the plank as well.

Then I’ll look for a new desk that better fits my small office, and then if I can work it out perhaps a small love seat or couch that will meet all the snuggling needs. Then it will be time to tackle the bookshelf and finally the Closet of Doom.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

I can’t wait to see my first Super Bowl in HD, the NFL really does look amazing on these TV’s. I’m sorry I waited so long to start putting my office and life in better order, but better late than never.

I suppose everyone thinks their dog is the best dog in the world, which is rather unfortunate, as we actually have the best dog in the world. Three years ago today, we added this wonderful girl to our family. At eight years old, the gray has spread further around her mouth and to her eyebrows as well, but Ellie is the same lovable goofball she was the day we met.

What a blessing to come home each day, met by Ellie dancing in joy!

The dog park section of Irving Park is surrounded by old oaks and maples so a couple of weeks ago I took Ellie up for a photo shoot in the fallen leaves. One of us was a little bored by the lack of running and/or hedgehogs.

I do my best to educate the pets on affairs both present and past. After one of our study lessons covered Cleisthenes, a father of Athenian democracy, the little ones were inspired to found the Irvington Democractic Society. They meet weekly to air grievances and propose resolutions.

Here, Emma takes the podium in support of one of her proposals, “All pets should only eat the food given to them and not push others out of the way and steal their food.” Emma and Scout voted in favor, Sam and Ellie against. Oh no! What do we do in the event of a tie?

This is the reason democracies always fail.

Requirement #1: It should be well-hidden with a secret entrance that only you can fit into.

Requirement #2: It should provide good viewing of your nemesis, Mr. Squirrel.

Requirement #3: It should have enough room for entertaining friends, but not so much that they will stay too long and impinge on your personal freedoms.

We have a patch of daisies in the backyard that don’t quite get as much sun as they should, but I leave them where they are as they make a good location for taking insect pictures. I tie the daisies up after they bloom as otherwise they fall over searching for more sunlight, but an unusually heavy downpour this summer knocked them over despite my efforts.

Since we didn’t get many insects on the daisies this year, after they fell I was going to cut them down until I realized another creature had taken up residence underneath their canopy.

In my many years and many travels, I’ve encountered only one universally accepted truth, one thing everyone agrees on, and that is this — when even Scout won’t sleep in her warm bed, it’s hot.

We had a lovely cool and wet spring here in the Northwest and escaped the summer with but a few hot days at the end. Scout is such a creature of habit that she likes to sleep in her warm bed no matter the temperature, so as the weather warms I unplug it to extend her comfort as long as possible. This picture is from one of those hot days in early September when she stepped out of the bed behind her and lay down on the cooler desk.

Recently I noticed that the bed doesn’t seem to be heating up anymore, even when plugged in, which puts us on the horn of a dilemma: do we leave it as is, knowing it won’t keep her as warm during the winter, or swap it out for a functional one but risk upsetting her routine?

For now we’re letting sleeping cats lie.

I had to replace a broken power supply cable for my laptop and while I was at it, picked up Apple’s 27″ Thunderbolt display. I’ve been interested in a big monitor ever since Apple launched their 30″ display years ago, but today was the day I finally realized the dream.

I’ve only just hooked it up, but wow! Wow!

This pic was a quick snap from my iPhone and I managed to get three out of the four pets in the frame. That’s Ellie’s paw sticking into the lower left corner, Emma’s tail sticking out from behind the box on the right, and of course Scout in the back on the window seat.

Ahem. Her window seat.

All three are now zonked out beside me in my office. The only one missing is little Sam, who was asleep in a chair in the basement last I saw him. Mostly asleep anyways, Emma was in a mischievous mood and was up on the table poking him from above.

Poke poke poke!

Nike’s world headquarters is close to where I work and every once in a while we are allowed to shop at their employee store. I hadn’t taken advantage of the opportunity before, the last time I needed shoes coincided with an opportunity to visit the Adidas employee store (their U.S. headquarters is here in Portland) and I picked up some running shoes and lightweight hiking shoes there instead.

This time though the opportunity to shop at the Nike employee store aligned with my need to replace my running shoes, and I bought two pairs of shoes, a traditional running shoe (Air Max’s on the left) and a barefoot-style trainer (Free TR2′s on the right). I’m not a runner, I just like the look and feel of running shoes, so being able to pick them up at a steep discount is welcome.

I set the shoes on the floor for a quick picture and was just testing the lighting when a certain someone sneaked into the frame. I didn’t like the lighting and moved them to a different room but when I tried to get Sam to pose in those pictures as well, he steadfastly refused. Even in the poor lighting this remains my favorite picture of the set, and I decided if I was running a marketing campaign I’d have cats randomly appearing in some of the product shots.

It’s probably best that I’m not running a marketing campaign.

Ten years ago I learned of the attacks from my wife before she left for work. I turned on the television as I got ready for work and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I turned on the radio as I drove to work and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. After work I sat in my window seat and watched the news in disbelief. I barely slept for the next two days.

Then one day as I sat in my window seat, Templeton jumped up into my lap and as I stroked his head he began to purr. He had a regular purr when he was happy but when he was ecstatic, his purr not only got louder but also had an extra texture layered into the mix. As he threw his purr into that extra gear I was overcome by how happy he was. My little gray cat knew nothing of the hatred one man feels for another because he prays to the wrong God or pledges allegiance to the wrong flag.

My strongest memory of that time is not of burning buildings but of a cat and contentment.

Templeton died almost four years ago but others carry on his tradition. Scout wasn’t a lap cat in her younger days (she is now) but she has always curled up on me as I fall asleep each night. Emma also wasn’t much of a lap cat in her youth but is starting to show signs of the calling. Little Sam, mercy me, he has been a snuggler of the highest order from the moment we met.

The picture above is how I wake up many mornings. That’s Scout on the left tucked up tight against my side, with Sam on the right curled up on my legs. Ellie is over on my right just out of frame.

The picture below is how I wake up every morning. Scout is sometimes elsewhere, Ellie too, but my first waking sensation is always the feel of Sam on my legs.

God bless the little ones.

I needed new hiking shoes and when I saw that The North Face had a model named Hedgehogs, I took this as a sign from God. The problem with signs, though, is how to interpret them. Was this a sign that they would bring me as much happiness as Ellie’s hedgehogs bring her? Or a sign that she would chew my Hedgehogs as merciless as she chews hers?

Ever the optimist I gambled on the former and so far, so good. I’m still breaking them in, REI didn’t have them in my normal size of 9.5 but half a size larger seems to be working OK. I wore them outside for the first time today on our evening walk, I’ll probably give them more of a workout in the Gorge this weekend to see how they do on hills. Plus I need to ease my body back into hiking if I’m going to take a big hiking trip late this month as I usually do.

You can even see the stains below her fangs from the blood of her victims! Fortunately for our household, her favorite prey is hedgehogs. Not just hedgehogs, but baby hedgehogs.

After the long writeup about workflow in the previous post, one more thought about tools. This is a picture of Templeton with the 15″ Powerbook I referenced in that post, my favorite computer of all time until my current MacBook Pro.

The picture was taken in January 2006 while Templeton was recuperating from surgery to remove the sewing needle he swallowed right before we left on Christmas vacation. He had to be kept from running and jumping, and isolated from Scout, so one of us stayed with him in the guest room while the other stayed with Scout. He had to wear a plastic cone to keep him from pulling out his stitches, but we gave him supervised time with it off so he could relax and clean his fur away from the incision.

I left the room for a brief moment and came back to find him sitting at my laptop, paws on the trackpad as though he was settled in for work. What he had really done was an old Templeton standby, though.

He stole my spot.

Templeton and my 15″ Powerbook. I loved them both. I miss one. Important as they are, tools are just tools.

I always knew I was one in a million! Or at least one of a million!

Yes, I was one of the over one million people that downloaded OS X Lion on the first day it was available. I’ve been on the trailing edge of Mac OS updates lately, I never upgraded to 10.5 and I only went to 10.6 when I had to because a software upgrade required it. But I’m as excited by recent advances in technology as I have been in a long time — including the iPad even though I don’t own one — and I love the direction Apple is taking its traditional lineup with Lion and recent computer updates.

I’ve only had my 15″ MacBook Pro for four months, but even at a month in it had become my favorite computer of all time (unless you count the iPhone, which would win by a landslide). The new laptop has all the charm of my previous favorite, the 15″ Powerbook, a computer greater than the sum of its parts. The new laptop is all that with greater parts, especially its quad-core processor and high-res screen.

I haven’t had much time to play around with Lion, or to read John Siracusa’s typically fantastic review of the new OS (it was his review of OS X 10.0 that first got my eyes wandering lustily to the Mac platform after decades in the PC camp, and his review of 10.2 that pushed me over the edge into buying my first Mac).

But so far so good with the new OS … well, there is one major disappointment: the name. Despite how closely the Ear of Cupertino bends to the Mouth of Irvington, Apple went in a different direction. Look I know Sam conjures up all thoughts adorable and snuggly, which might not be appropriate for a powerful new OS, but he’s more dangerous than any lion if you get between him and his food.

Just ask Scout and Emma.

Sentient or not, Ellie’s stomach got upset after the 4th of July weekend and Monday morning and evening we had the pleasure of cleaning up after she pooped in the house. Sometimes she gets diarrhea like this when she eats something she’s not supposed to, but to the best of our knowledge she’s had no misadventures lately. My wife moved her right away onto a bland diet of rice and chicken and she regained control of her bowels.

It’s possible it’s stress related from all of the fireworks activity. When it got loud on the evening of the 4th I closed all the windows despite the heat to help deaden the sound and ease the nerves of the cats who were hiding under beds and couches. Ellie didn’t show much outward sign of distress, and although she would look up at me when a boom was especially loud or close, she always settled back down when I told her it was OK.

If she thought it was doggie Armageddon, she didn’t seem too concerned that she wasn’t being raptured, so long as we were together. That is unconditional love.

Another change I made to the Giving of Treats is to swap out the treat I give to Scout. While she still likes the WildSide Salmon dried salmon treats, she wasn’t eating them with the same fervor so I decided to mix things up a bit. I started off with Whiskas Wild Alaskan Salmon Flavor Temptations, a little treat with a crunchy whole grain shell and a meaty treat inside. Despite the name, the first ingredient is chicken meal and the wild Alaskan salmon flavor (whatever that is) is one of the last, but Scout loves them. She’s normally a bit picky about food so it’s nice to find another treat she gets excited about.

Sam likes them too, but that’s not too surprising, Sam likes just about everything. He has gotten more tolerant of Flea Medicine Night, a monthly ritual necessitated by Scout’s flea allergy, partly with experience I suppose and partly because I started giving the cats a few treats afterward to soothe their injured souls. Now instead of hiding from me for a few hours afterward, Sam has learned it is treat time and he doesn’t even resist his treatments with the same vigor that he used to — in other words, I don’t end up bleeding anymore.

Emma is another picky eater and while she likes the wet food she gets in the mornings, and sometimes eats the dried salmon treats, I have not yet found a dried treat she will consistently eat. I picked up a couple of new Temptations flavors, Free Range Chicken and Yellow Fin Tuna, to see how they would be received. I had little doubt Sam would love them but really hoped Emma would take to them too.

On the latest flea night I assembled the three cats after their treatment, each a little irritable but each eyeing the treat bags I held in my hands. Emma didn’t like any of the treats, a disappointment but not a surprise, while Scout loved them all. The biggest surprise was Sam, who not only didn’t like the new flavors but actually spit them out!

Scout, who was learned well from her Snuggle Twin, body blocked Sam out of the way and devoured his spurned treats and Emma’s too, not a normal behavior for our gentle Queen. I guess it’s safe to say she likes these treats!

I have given her the Tuna flavor the last few days in the mornings, the first time after I handed her the last treat she swatted my empty hand with her paw. I thought it an aberration until she did it again the following morning. This morning though she just buried her head in my empty hand and rubbed her head through my fingers to capture any fleeing evanescences from the departed treats.

I’ve made a couple of modifications to our morning ritual of treats for the pets. We had started giving Ellie Checkups once a day, a white dog-shaped treat that is supposed to be good for her teeth. When we discovered this is by far her favorite treat of all, instead of giving Ellie a charcoal dog biscuit in the morning she now gets her white bone.

And oh how she loves them! When I open the door to the closet where we keep them, she runs into my office and quickly lies down on her dog bed, so intently focused that she doesn’t move apart from her big black tail which wags furiously.

My wife takes her about once a week to doggie day care so she can spend the day socializing with other dogs. She normally enjoys this and doesn’t need any encouragement to go out the door, but one day my wife was running ahead of schedule and was ready to leave while I was still feeding Scout her treats, and thus before Ellie had gotten her highly anticipated white bone. When my wife called her, Ellie got up and started for the door but then returned to me and half-sat and half-stood, torn between obeying my wife’s call and waiting for her treat, as if she were being controlled by two minds.

I think her stomach has become self-aware.

My little grumpus in her warm bed

Our good and gentle queen turned ten back in March. We’ve had Scout since she was a kitten so she’s been by my side the entire decade. She is a queen that rules with a soft furry fist. Her monarchy is characterized by a modified form of laissez-faire — everyone is welcome to do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t interfere with what she wants.

For example, if Sam is sleeping on my lap and she wants to snuggle too, he’s welcome to stay where he is just so long as he doesn’t mind when she steps on him as she goes through her rituals of getting petted before she’ll lie down. I try to tell her that a good queen doesn’t walk all over the little people but this subtlety is lost on her.

She also considers one of the warm beds hers. The others are welcome to sleep in it as long as they get up when she wants it. When they don’t, she gives them the evil eye for a few moments. If that doesn’t work, she comes over and starts giving me the business until I evict them.

Yes, she can be a little grumpus. But she’s my little grumpus. I wouldn’t trade her for the world.

The other morning I woke up at 4 a.m. and felt my wife cuddled up against my back. I rolled over to put my arm around her and discovered Ellie there instead. I later discovered my wife had just gotten up and Ellie immediately jumped onto the bed and took her spot.

Perhaps my wife had better watch her back lest Ellie “accidentally” push her down the stairs.

This picture of Ellie was taken on a foggy winter’s day in the off-leash section of Irving Park. When we first got her I had doubts we’d ever be able to let her off-leash like this as she was a bit of a wild woman when given her freedom. Now though she does really well and we enjoy our playtime in the park. She still prefers playing with me to dogs, but at times she joins them in their fun.

Yesterday I took her on an extra walk in the afternoon and she romped around with the two dogs who were there, both energetic little puppies. She kept up with the little ones just fine, then came home and zonked out on the floor of my office.

If you're thinking black bear or sasquatch, both of which would be good answers, keep in mind I shot this at point blank range with my iPhone

In the night
in black and white
I wake you from your troubled dreams
and bring you back to life.