katster's closet

So it was the shindig for my grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary tonight.  Before we all went over to the restaurant, we hung out in the hotel. My uncle found the shades in the pocket in the back of Mom’s wheelchair and soon enough, my cousin Steph was rocking them.  In the pic is Jill, Steph, and Steph’s boyfriend Mike.

Happy anniversary, Nanny and Papa!

Mirrored from retstak.org.

Candles at church, by me

I’ve been doing a lot of wheelspinning lately as I try to figure out something. I haven’t figured out much in the way of conclusions because I haven’t had the time to pursue threads all the way out, but there is one thing that comes to mind.

Ignore all that ‘must co-opt pagan holiday’ stuff that caused the birth of Jesus to be moved to the bleak midwinter as opposed to the more logical late spring that all the trappings of the story hint at, and look at it from a different perspective. As a storyteller, there is no better time of the year. The world is at its darkest in the days around the solstice, so much so that we light our homes with blazing electric lights to chase the darkness away. And metaphorically, isn’t that what the Christchild story is? Bringing light to a dark world?

The story demands the change.

Anyway, that’s one of the threads I’m still trying to follow to its conclusion; I may or may not continue to blog about it.

But for those who celebrate it, Merry Christmas! And if you don’t, may you have a good day today as well.

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

So it’s November. November means it’s NaNoWriMo month, which means that I’m running around like a crazy person. Then I stupidly said, “Ah why not, I’ll update my blog every day this month. It’s not like I don’t have enough to do.” Since I’m sure there’s folks out there that want to keep me honest, guess I’d better get the month started.

Anyway, it was a good day. The kickoff was nicely attended, and I got a good chunk of writing done. I added another six hundred words at the write-in we did for TV. I haven’t watched the clip yet, so I don’t know how much of me made it in, but my highly awesome co-ML, underpope, got interviewed and didn’t do so bad. (Ah, here’s the clip. I’m in the background a lot.)

But the combination of staying up way late for write-in, and then getting up way early for the morning write-in, alongside the timechange, is just making my brain go *splat*. And since that means I’m not coherent, that means it should be bedtime.

But I have nearly four thousand words, and I saw a nice sunset. It was a good day.

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

God, has it been nearly two weeks since I bothered to update my blog?

Ah, here, have a picture:

I took this at the Rivercats game last night. It’s the first time I’ve been out to Raley Field, and, while the Cats sucked rocks through a bendy straw last night, it was a perfect night for baseball, especially as the sun started to set. For those of you who don’t know, the Rivercats are the Triple-A affiliate of the Oakland A’s, and the stadium is just across the river from downtown Sacramento. (That gold bridge on the left? That’s the Tower Bridge, which crosses the Sacramento River, and is generally one of the two things used to as icons to identify Sacramento. The other is, of course, the State Capitol building.

Anyway, just letting folks know I live. I’ll have more to say later.

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

It was very strange this morning after I dropped my mom off at her work in Rancho Cordova. Instead of doubling back to Folsom Blvd and following it all the way back down to the office at the corner of Watt and Folsom, I instead got on Highway 50 and headed for downtown. Yeah, the office moved downtown, very close to the corner of 5th and Capitol here in downtown Sacramento. Today’s the first day for the company at the new office. It’s going to take some getting used to.

I’ve already had to move cubes once today as the first cube I chose was driving me absolutely crazy — I’ve found out that I really don’t like sitting exposed with my back to the rest of the office. I’m not sure if it’s involuntary reactions to the times my mother sat quietly behind me watching me do things when I didn’t know she was there or if it’s just the occassional bout of paranoia that I’m prone to. Anyway, I’m much happier in my new cube, where I can see most of the office and don’t feel like everybody’s staring at me when I’m not looking.

Another thing that keeps striking my brain as wrong is the cubicals. Instead of the old full-high cubes, our new cubes are half-height, so if I lift my head, I can see across the office. (This also may have played into the involuntary twitch reaction.) They’re also beige instead of the blue-grey our prior cubicals are. For the most part I like it, as it’s nice to have line of sight to the far end of the office, but I miss the storage space up above the desk that our old cubes had.

But anyway, some normality is returning to my world as Luigi and the bad dudes are now adorning the top of my cube again, the binders with my ESX guides are sitting on my desk, and the only thing I’m waiting on to make my cube fully my own again is to hang up some important papers on the walls. It’s still a bit bare, though. I should find a good Cal picture (or maybe a pennant) to hang in the corner and make this cube even more my own.

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for cat blogging! So here, have a shiny photo of Ebony-kitty outside on a beautiful spring day this week.

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

It’s a caption contest. Y’all know what to do.

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

So, in the process of cleaning up my room, I found my old Nalgene bottle I used to carry around when I was in grad school. I’ve been trying to drink more water, so I’ve gotten back in the habit of carrying it to work:

But this has its problems. If you’re not familiar with Nalgene bottles, they have a wide mouth. This is great for filling it, but not so great for drinking from it. Also, the only way to attach it to a bag is to weave the cap through a strap. Both of these are problems, so I went to REI yesterday to fix it.

The attachment problem is simple: I now have a carabiner on the cap loop to attach it to a bag. (Okay, technically, it’s a carabiner keychain. It’s even stamped “Not for climbing” on the side. But the REI guy and I both figured that a real carabiner would have been overkill for the situation.)

But the coup is the little piece I bought to fit in the mouth of the Nalgene bottle and make it easier to drink from. It covers most of the mouth, and it looks like this:

Yes. It always gives me a bit of a smile when I open the water bottle.

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

You know how I was speculating how bad it was in Redding in my last post?

My friend Linda Raven Moore lives up Weaverville way. For those of you not in the know, Weaverville’s in the mountains west of Redding. It’s the county seat of Trinity County, which is the most rural county in the state. A large chunk of Trinity County is the Trinity Alps Wilderness, a stretch of land that has been left to be natural — there aren’t even roads through it. (All firefighting in the Wilderness has to be done by hand tools, that’s how strict they are about it.)

Needless to say, Trinity County is on fire at the moment. This is about what it looked like a day or so ago:

picture courtesy Linda Raven Moore

Linda’s got more pictures at her blog entries on the subject: Smoky Weaverville and Smoky Ride. They’re worth the time to look at all her pictures.

Actually, Linda’s blogs are worth the time in general. She’s got four of them: Raven’s Roads, her travel blog, Raven’s Rides, her motorcycle blog, Raven’s RV, about life in a motor home, and Raven’s Range, the general catchall blog. She’s a good writer, and a master of the photoessay. Check it out!

(In comments, my friend David says that things are clearing out a bit. It’s more smoky in Sacramento today. I’m staying in as much as possible.)

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.

The folks who hang on my IRC channel have occasionally seen gibberish come across their screen as a kitten walked across the laptop keyboard. That’s Ebony, and she’s the all black kitten in back. She has a paw draped over her sister, but it’s kinda hard to tell because of black on black problems.

The kitten in front is Curly, so named because her tail is kinked, and when she was little, it was curly like a pig’s tail. She’s much less daring than Ebony (and thus not prone to type on IRC), but she’s a real sweetheart when you approach her on her terms.

The two of them came into my life about a month ago, when their owner had a bit of a desperate situation and needed to get out fast, which meant we ended up providing a place to stay for three kitties (the two kittens and their momma). But their owner has found a better situation, and kitties are going to be leaving tomorrow. I’ll miss them.

Since it’s hard to see Curly in this picture, I’ll provide another here (or under the cut, for LJ syndication).

( Oh hai dere, are you from the internet? )