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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Sam and Emma came to live with us just over three years ago, Ellie just under two. Last Christmas and this, we managed to avoid adding more pets to the household, which is good because the bed is full up. Emma rarely joins us at night but when I wake up Sam, Scout, and Ellie are usually sharing the bed. And oftentimes a hedgehog.

Once they detect I’m awake, they come snuggling up for attention. Sometimes one of them will “accidentally” wake me, making me wonder if they cast lots in the darkness to see who should wake me this time. To be fair there’s no “accidentally” about it when Scout wakes me, she has always considered this to be her divine right and makes no apologies.

Sam usually snuggles up tight throughout the night. If synchronized spooning were an Olympic event we’d be gold medalists every time, we’ve perfected the art of me slowly turning over while he keeps tucked up tight against me.

This picture is of Sam in a rare non-snuggling moment.

I woke up to little Sam peeking out from under the covers. I use my iPhone as my alarm clock so I grabbed it off the nightstand and took a quick picture before he snuggled onto my chest and the moment was gone.

While my iPhone can’t hold a candle to my Canon 7D, especially in low light, it takes a nicer picture than the 7D during those times when the iPhone is in hand and the big camera is sitting in my office.

I handed my iPhone to a stranger so they could take a picture of me shooting free throws to help seal the victory of my Portland Trail Blazers over the Los Angeles Clippers. I had never noticed it before, but I look an awful lot like Andre Miller when photographed.

Coming right at you!

One of the previous owners of the house must have really loved this one type of bulb because they are literally planted everywhere around the house. Unfortunately that includes some places where they shouldn’t be, such as in and around my favorite rose bush (which is actually a few rose bushes planted together). While the bulbs do have a pretty flower, they also are so thick they keep the roses from drying out, leaving them susceptible to the black spot fungus which has plagued our roses.

So earlier this summer I dug out as many of the bulbs as I could from underneath these roses. I tried to avoid damaging the roses but it was slow going as many of the bulbs were up tight against their roots. Also because the thorns of these old roses are both large and malevolent.

The going got even slower when Sam came over to help. The stalks were still attached to many of the bulbs, and as I pulled a few of them up he started playing with them. So we turned it into a game, I’d drag the stalks through the grass and he’d try to catch them and knock the seed pods off. When the stalk was sufficiently flayed, I’d toss it up and he’d somersault through the air after it.

Eventually I dug up as many bulbs as I could and all of Sam’s organic cat toys were gone. I took this picture of him after our fun and games were over.

For a week or so, Sam took to sleeping in the dog bed in the basement. Fortunately Ellie didn’t mind, least not as long as he was willing to move at hedgehog time. Although I think Emma grew a bit concerned for her little brother’s mental state.

Literally minutes after taking one of my favorite pictures of Ellie, I snapped one of my favorite pictures of Sam. Of course I have many favorites of our photogenic feline, there’s silent Sam, snowy Sam, snuggly Sam, scary Sam, sleepy Sam, shadowy Sam, scrunchy Sam, and so many others.

Sam has returned to his role as the watchman, sticking his head out the door the moment I open it when I come home from work. He’s never lost his desire for the role, mind you, just that when our dog Ellie began to wait for me as well, Sam learned quickly to stay out of the range of her happy feet when I came inside. Now he stands a few feet back and waits for the happy dance to end, when Ellie runs off to look for a hedgehog he comes up to say hello.

But if Ellie is somewhere else at the time, as she always is these days while she’s confined, he’s right back at his post, first to say hello.

Sam yawns while I photograph the Great Ball of Toes.

I love Sam’s pink footpads and have photographed his paws close-up before, but so far this impossible jumble of three paws is my favorite.

Sam curled up and slept on my lap as I watched a documentary about the Druid wolf pack in Yellowstone. He woke when they showed some noisy ravens on a wolf kill and stood transfixed before the television, something I’ve not seen from him before. Suddenly wolves dashed across the screen and he jumped up and swatted madly at them. His claws were retracted so I let him have his fun attacking wolves and coyotes and elk and bison and all the animals of that great land.

Finally, exhausted from the hunt, he settled back down to sleep on my legs. The documentary didn’t flinch from the brutality of the wolves to other animals and neighboring wolf packs, but even so, I hope for their sake they never have to face my little hunter. Particularly if I were to let slip the lie that they’re the reason he has to get his flea treatments.

These pictures are the first I’ve taken using the live view on the back of the camera instead of the optical viewfinder, something I can’t do with my older cameras. The live view allowed me to lower the camera to his eye level as he slept on my legs and get a much more intimate portrait.

Never has a more snuggly creature walked the earth than our little Sam.

He’s nearly always sleeping on me when I fall asleep and sleeping on me when I first awake. He sleeps on me in the evenings as we curl up in my chair, as he is now, his legs tucked under the laptop and his pink nose inches from my hands.

He also loves to snuggle up with both Scout and Emma. Yesterday when I woke Ellie had her head on my chest and Sam and Scout were curled up together on my legs.

Sam and Emma underneath the Christmas tree, a slightly calmer scene than yesterday. I was going to title yesterday’s post “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things”, but since I recently got a nice new camera I couldn’t do it in good conscience.

Today’s cameras really are remarkable. I took both of these pictures tonight, handheld, with the Christmas tree lights providing the only illumination. I decided to try the 7D at ISO 3200 and used the image stabilization in the lens to compensate for the slow shutter speed.

With black-and-white the colors fall,
With little orange the cold winds call,
With black the white will cover all.
Ancient riddle

Can you guess the answer?