2008 Year in Review

In one of my favorite Christmas movies, Bing Crosby advises Rosemary Clooney in song: "If you're worried and you can't sleep, just count your blessings instead of sheep and you'll fall asleep counting your blessings." Like many song lyrics, it sounds a little less redundant and nonsensical in song. But I like the sentiment. It's not only appropriate just for when you're worried, but for just about any other time, including year end reviews, bad moods, stuck in traffic and tightrope walking while juggling flaming torches (though you may need the advanced class to do that last part).


Things I'm thankful for:
- My health: Probably the easiest to take for granted until it all goes wrong. All it takes is a split second accident or having genetics fail you. My grandmother on my dad's side of the family is still going strong at 95. On the other hand, I have no idea what sort of health issues are on my mother's side of the family - it could be the health roulette for all I know.
- My loved ones, friends and family: It's the gift of their presence in my life that keeps life rich and rewarding. Whether I've known them since I first took breath or only developed a friendship in the last year, it's those relationships I cherish. I don't make friends easily, being the shy type. And no matter what they tell you in the fairy tales and sitcoms, relationships take work to maintain. It could be as simple as keeping in touch or as difficult as going to therapy to work out stuck points in communication, but it's all effort. And the reward is the connection and closeness that makes a world of difference.
- This year I stayed employed: Given the world economy meltdown, this one is worth celebrating.
- We bought a new house: It's bigger than the previous house. We can have family and friends come over to visit. So far we can afford it.
- We have Ka and Zaia: I've already written a few times about this. But having them as part of the family and household has brought chaos and comedy, responsibility and a whole new set of things to pay attention to like which breakable objects in the house could be seen as potential cat toys.
- We traveled to Bali: It was a wonderful trip (which I promise to write about in more depth next year). It took a long time to get there and really felt like we got a glimpse of a different world. At the same time, it reminded me of growing up in the Philippines.

Things I'm proud of:
- I wrote another book: Again, it's only a first draft of a novel, but it's a complete story and may turn into something worth sending around at some point. I'm glad to have some potential projects to work on in the future. For now, I think I'll go back to my first novel from last year and see if I can make something of it.
- I progressed to purple belt in karate: The belt progression from here goes purple, brown, then black. It gets harder from here with a higher chance of my breaking something, I'm sure.
- Winning first prize at DNA Lounge's Halloween costume contest: See my previous post on this.
- Paying attention to and participating (somewhat) to the 2008 presidential election: Never done that before. I learned lots about how our government works (or doesn't).

There are many more things I'm thankful for and probably a shorter list of things I'm proud of, but for the sake of actually submitting this post before the end of the year, I'll decline from enumerating them further. I'm very happy for the blessings I have.

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Cirque of Ka and Zaia

We haven't gotten very far with new tricks. Ka and Zaia get so enthusiastic about receiving the treats that my fingers bear battle scars. So I guess we need to work on some kitty zen with them - that clawing and biting don't get them the treats any sooner. The trouble with learning that rule is that it involves more battle scars before they get it. I have to space it out and let my fingers heal in between lessons.

But they do have the following trick down pat:



Ka is a much more linear and impatient student than Zaia. Once he figures out what will get him the treats, he'll repeat it over and over and over and over. He does experiment now and then but gets frustrated easily. Zaia loves the treats too, but perhaps not with the passion of burning suns that Ka has. So she tends to be much more random. I think she picks up tricks by watching Ka do something and then she follows. However she is more willing to do random things to try and figure out what I'm trying to get them to do. Except that without Ka's powers of retention, it remains somewhat random until Ka learns it and repeats it (over and over and over).

We're working on getting Ka to High-Five sans claws. Right now, I put a hand up, he puts a paw out with claws to bring it closer and see if there's a treat in it. But when we leave the house, he has taken to sitting on his cat tree next to the window and putting a paw up to wave goodbye against our hand on the other side of the window.

Then there's Fetch. I've seen them both pick up things and carry them around so we just need to get them to bring those things to us. Right now, they tend to carry it off to their favorite spot (i.e. under the Christmas tree) to play with it there. It's a hit or miss endeavor.

As for the Litter Robot, it's like it's always been their litterbox. (And there was much rejoicing in the household.) They still go to the bathroom together. And they both find they have to go right when we're adding new litter to it or otherwise tending to it. There's no longer any flinching and looking nervously towards the upstairs bathroom when it starts cycling. So we'll call this a win-win.

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Christmas Card Writing

Tonight, I put some Christmas music on (Harry Connick Jr., Charlie Brown Christmas, The Carpenters and Diana Krall on iTunes party shuffle), printed out our Christmas card address list, gathered this year's card selection, address labels and stamps and sat at the coffee table near the Christmas tree to start our annual ritual. I didn't always enjoy this process. When we first started this tradition, it had the scent of obligation. We would receive warm holiday wishes in the form of cards from the mailbox. It was such a nice feeling to actually receive mail that didn't suggest or demand an extraction of money from us, that we figured it would be nice if we provided a source of that feeling to our friends and family too. Prior to that year, I had written plenty of Christmas cards, but it was generally delivered to my family on Christmas Day in person. This ritual, this tradition was different. Family was now in different corners of the country and we wouldn't always see each and every one of them over the holidays. I poured the foundation on the ritual when I opened up Microsoft Word and generated the matrix of names and addresses (in alphabetic order of course).

Our Christmas card list includes both family and friends. Some friends we have come to treat as family. Other friends have drifted away such that the Christmas correspondence has become our sole communication. I have argued with myself that maybe those folks should be dropped off the list. But every year that I have received cards from them, I enjoyed hearing from them. Whether it's their holiday newsletter, telling us what their family has been up to in the past year, or a simple signature on the inside of the card. It has me thinking about them, the times we'd shared in the past, the gratitude that we were on their Christmas card list. The same thing happens when I pick up my Pilot G-2 fine point gel pen to write out their card. Whether it's fond memories of the last barbecue we had with them or wondering what they're up to now, we're sending our best wishes out to them at this time of year.

It's a process that goes well with Christmas lights and Vince Guaraldi Trio's jazzy O Tannenbaum. I guess it's just another way to count the blessings we have in friendship and kinship.

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Electric Mayhem Movie-watching

It's that time of year again. Time for the Christmas specials, that is. More specifically, time for the Muppet Christmas Carol. Ali found that it was playing at the El Campanil Theatre in Antioch. She called to let the owner, Rick, know that the Mayhem wanted to show up for the movie. While it is customary to show up in costume in San Francisco on the opening night of highly anticipated movies, it's probably less prevalent with even time-honored classics like the Muppet Christmas Carol. Thankfully, Rick didn't think us too crazy and allowed us out in public at his theatre. Where children would be! And with free tickets!


There was even press about the event ahead of time.


The movie started at 2pm, but Rick asked us to show up at 1pm to greet our fellow movie-goers and get pictures taken, if anyone were so inclined. It was a little quiet early on, but we did get our first posed picture with a little girl. Her brother declined the photo-op. We waved at a few cars that slowed down as they passed by. Then we went inside the lobby to greet the guests there, after we took a brief tour of the beautifully renovated, eighty-year old theatre. After becoming incorporated as a non-profit organization, it went through a face-lift to reopen in 2004. In the lobby, we stood next to the Christmas tree and a mechanized Santa and Mrs. Claus making out their list. I noticed that Animal was distinctly not on that list. It must have been the 'Naughty' list.


We had a few brave children that came forward to shake hands and introduce themselves at their parents' encouragement. Animal's head got petted several times and some even posed for pictures holding onto Animal's chain. Most were shy though, intimidated by 7-foot tall Muppets. It was fun and fascinating to wonder what the little ones thought of large, stuffed-animal looking creatures. On the one hand, we looked like cuddly Muppets. On the other hand, we were two, three, maybe four times their size. I guess it's akin to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in the first Ghostbusters movie without the whole world destroying rampage. One little girl didn't make it into the lobby. She took one look at us through the glass, screamed, and took off running down the street. We thought that was a good time to retire from greeting duty and wave to the people in the theatre.

The movie, for those unfamiliar, was Dickens' Scrooge tale with Michael Caine playing Ebenezer Scrooge. Kermit was Bob Cratchit and Gonzo narrated as Charles Dickens himself. But the most important part of the movie came during the ghost of Christmas past's lesson where the Electric Mayhem, clad in Victorian garb, rocked out Mr. Fozziwig's Christmas party. Highlight of the movie, I tell you.

Afterwards, some of the previously shy kids shed their reluctance to come say hi. Or maybe we looked smaller sitting down. At any rate, we got hugs and escorts and high fives as we all filed back out of the theatre. Having kids standing that closely to us was a bit of a hazard as none of us had visibility directly downwards (blocked by our huge jaws). As a result, I had to make sure to tilt my head down as much as I could before taking a step. Outside, we posed for more pictures and waited until the younger kids were gone before decapitating ourselves and revealing our true identities. Rick invited us back sans costumes for a future show and judging from the line-up coming up, I know we're sure to have a good time then too.

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High Tech Gadgetry, Zaia-Ka Style

In my youth, one of my chores inspired my lyric misunderstanding of the song "Rock the Casbah" by The Clash. I heard, "Cherie don't like it. Not the catbox, not the catbox" and thought they wrote it just for me. I hadn't lived with cats since I lived at home before college, but I knew I would live with them again. And now, I have Ka and Zaia.

But let me back up a little and get to the point. Two years ago, when I was daydreaming about having cats again, I remembered my "Not the Catbox" song and researched possible ways that the 21st century might have been brought to the litterbox. That was when I discovered the Litter-Robot being raved over at the Automatic Litterbox Forum (if you don't think there's a forum for just about any topic, rest assured, there is one). Intrigued, I headed over to the company website to see how it worked, and why I should believe it would be reliable. The product itself is essentially a barrel on its side atop a waste bin. The barrel holding the litter, upon detecting cat usage, would roll, sift out the good litter, and continue rolling until the clumped litter could be dumped out into the waste bin underneath it. Then it would roll back, putting the unused litter back in place and ready for the next visit. Thus, scooping would be done automatically, requiring only that the waste bin be dumped out every few days or so. The smell, hopefully, would be confined to the waste bin only. Cats, being cats, could still find ways to foil this ingenious system, not the least of which would be refusing to use it. This was by far the biggest obstacle according to the litterbox forum. But I was intrigued (and not a little jealous that I hadn't thought of the idea myself). But I didn't have cats then.

Now I do.

Since Ka and Zaia are still kittens, I figured it would be easier to get them acclimated to a fancy new litterbox than if they were older. So it was a red letter day when I pushed the order button. And with much anticipation, I saw that it would be delivered on the Friday before Thankgiving.

We predicted that Ka, as our resident adventurer, would be first to check it out, use it, and thenceforth try to figure out how it worked. Zaia would be a little slower to take to it, but once Ka experienced it and didn't yowl in displeasure, she would be fine with it.

And so it arrived:

The box was huge. Ka was with me when I opened it and put it on the floor to have a look. It was still huge. He didn't seem too perturbed about it. He sniffed all the parts. It wasn't until I carried it up the stairs to their bathroom that it began to dawn on him that he ought to pay more attention to it. Zaia was with us by then and she sat farther off to watch the goings on. I moved their current litterbox to the side and set up the Litter-Robot in its place. It took both Lee and I to read through the instructions and put litter in it. Once it was ready to go, we unplugged it so as to not freak the cats out too much. According to the company's suggestion, we left the current litterbox in place, but didn't bother cleaning it. We put a clump of the old litter into the new litterbox to give them the right smell of an idea.

Both had a habit of having to use the litterbox the second we dug around the litter to clean it out. So we scooped around in the new litterbox to get their attention. To our surprise, it was Zaia that led the way. She poked her head into the old litterbox, sniffed disdainfully and stepped up into the new one and used it. Ka was not one to be left out and crawled in after her, relishing in the depth of the new litterbox with apparent glee. Said glee was evident in the rain of litter making it out of the box as Ka flung it about, rearranged the clean litter, dug to the bottom to find out what it was made of. All seemed to be going well so far. That is, until we cycled it sometime later in their presence for the first time. Ka fluffed himself up and backed up. Zaia ran to their bed and hung out there for a few moments. She hopped down and made it halfway back to the litterbox by the time the cycle ended. A soothing pet for Ka soon after the litterbox cycle sent him all-paws into the air. No, that didn't go well at all.

The next time Ka went to the litterbox, he went into his old box, out of it, sniffed at the Litter-Robot's step, then ultimately went in his old box. Sigh. But it was only day 2. We had 58 days left in the company's money back trial period. We left the old box in place over the next couple of days and only cycled it while the cats were distracted with their feather toy so they could get used to the motor sound of the litterbox cycling (which sounded eerily like their nemesis, the Roomba). During the week, we soon graduated to cycling the Litter-Robot while they played within sight of it. They would perk up and show interest in the box, but played on. By Tuesday night, when we were gathering up the trash for trash day, we decided to keep the Litter-Robot on supervised cycling only and remove the old litterbox. At the start of Thanksgiving weekend, we left the new litterbox on automatic mode during the day and turned it off at night. By Friday, we were leaving the box on 24 hours a day.

But now, on Sunday, we have a new challenge. Ka has gotten over his initial wariness and is in full investigation mode. As soon as he hears the motor going, he trots upstairs to watch it. He has since discovered that stepping on its entrance step will stop the cycling momentarily, a handy safety feature. It also allows him to go inside and see what's different if the barrel is upside down (there's no litter and there's some sort of grate to stand on). Unfortunately, it also starts moving again 15 seconds after he stops it mid-cycle unless he triggers the sensor again. We have not yet come home to a thoroughly confused robot, but I foresee that event in the near future. Hopefully it won't be long after that until the Litter-Robot finally becomes their regular old, boring litterbox.

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NaNoWriMo 2008

I'm a winner, I'm a winner, I'm a winner *dancedancedance*! It says so on this nifty certificate right here, all printed out and ready to hang on something prominent. As you can see, the certificate is even on a first name basis with me. We are new good friends and we just met!



With five days left in November, I'm declaring this novel writing month complete (except for the requisite celebrations) for me. I ended up with 51,585 words, written in approximately 60 hours this month. (That's it? 60 hours? It felt like at least 60 gazillion). I also have a complete story in those 51K words which is even better.

This year, I decided to write a mystery. In my youth, there were two sections of the library that I think I managed to read all the books in: the fantasy/sci-fi section and the mystery section. Since I wrote fantasy for NaNoWriMo last time, I thought I'd try my hand at mystery. My co-workers gave me the idea of setting the murder in the corporate world and the idea of a Dilbert-ized murder mystery intrigued me. I don't think I achieved quite the funny Scott Adams does regularly for Dilbert, but at least it was the inspiration. For my detective, I picked a happily married female to defy the loner, unhappily married or single stereotype I'd already encountered several times before. As a matter of fact, some of the easiest scenes for me to write was going home with her and just being part of their oh-so-normal familial routine, complete with cats Ka and Zaia. Ah, how life imitates art. It probably makes for utterly undramatic reading, but it did make the words go by faster.

And they didn't go by very quickly for me this year. In stark contrast to last year, I had no plot outline. I was busy just before November kicked off for some reason that had something to do with Muppets and didn't get to do more than brainstorm elements of the story and about the detective. I didn't even use all of the elements I jotted down and my detective sure didn't end up acting like I had originally intended. I did reinforce my learning from last year that goal-setting is key for me. I set my daily word count goal to the same goal as last year: 2000. And even though I would often sit down at the keyboard with no idea what was happening next, somehow by the time I went to bed sometimes quite late, I'd have those 2000 words. Once again, I lost track of my characters' names and it seemed like I went through a lot of incidental characters this year (red herring potential). I tried to make myself an index to reference, but apparently the characters were coming too fast and furious to keep up (or I got lazy). It will be very interesting to figure out later that I had actually meant Sophie to be the same person as Sarah and the person I called Jonas was initially Jacob. Ah well.

Surprisingly, I also spent less time delving into the community which was so exciting for me to participate in last year. The people are still way cool, of course, but I found myself just typing to the entertainment of my cats and some iTunes music. I 'sponsored' a couple of local write-ins once a week which served to prove to me how much faster I can get through words without the distraction of home stuff. And the commiserating at the write-ins let me know I hadn't completely lost my mind, which was comforting. I completely kicked my word warring habit from last year (*Word War: a friendly competition among NaNoWriMoers in which the person who writes the most words in an agreed upon time frame gets bragging rights). And apparently, I gained the annoying habit of using many parentheses.

And of course, there was the mid-month Write-a-Thon. Thanks to the generosity of family, friends and even some strangers, I got to partake in a thrilling night of writing! It was set in the SoMa Arts Center in San Francisco with a Noir theme. How apropos was that? There were many fedoras and evening gowns to be seen around laptops. We had a tasty pasta dinner and many sweets and caffeine and even alcohol to keep us going. Chris Baty, NaNoWriMo's founder, gave us a humorous overview of the last 10 years of NaNoWriMo and I got to sit next to the attendant who had traveled the farthest to be there that night, Adrian from Sydney, Australia, who incidentally was also writing a mystery.

I understand that common wisdom of NaNoWriMo is that the sophomore year is tough, dragging people down in the depths of despair. I'm glad that I've survived intact, early, albeit less interested in this past story than the previous year's. And now on to gratitude and turkey!

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Cat Clicker Training or What My Kittens Will Do For Treats

I'm not sure how I got the idea of clicker training cats in my head. Or even training cats to begin with. So I'll start this story with my Google search for 'clicker training'. Of course I immediately found Karen Pryor's website for clicker training dogs, cats, horses, whatever animal you want to train. But more importantly, she had clicker training gear. I ordered the beginner cat training set that comes with an instruction book and a clicker. I went and picked out some suitable treats (small bits so they don't get full too quickly and different from their regular cat food so it seems more like a treat) from the pet store. I ended up with Wellness brand jerky treats that fit the bill. And judging from Ka and Zaia's motivation, they really fit the bill.


As soon as the instruction book arrived, I devoured the beginning pages. It did start off with the benefits of clicker training (like closer connection to your cats, another way of communication and mental stimulation for both owners and cats) but I skimmed through that and headed straight for how to get started. The first step was to have them associate the click sound with something good happening, i.e. treats. That may have taken 0.5 seconds but I wasn't timing. Next, we tried target training. I held out a chopstick and click/treated them when they touched it. It was maybe a minute later that they were following me and chasing the stick around so that they could touch it and get a treat. Apparently I made a bit of a mistake here in that I rewarded any sort of contact with the target when I should have just rewarded nose touching. We're retraining this now. Zaia gets it better than Ka. He'll still raise his paw to grab the target and bring it closer faster.

I noticed a few things during this process. The first is that they both learn amazingly quickly. Ka is more persistent in learning. I call him our Puzzler and can almost see his little brain pondering new things to try. He's figured out that doing something to knobs, whether they're doors or cabinet pulls, makes them open. He hasn't quite figured out what he needs to do to actually get them to open, but we'll find him trying every now and then.

The second thing is that I look forward to our training sessions in the evenings and I'll catch myself dreaming up new things to try the next time we train. I try to make sure we keep our sessions short to leave them wanting for more so that they don't decide it's boring for the next time. But if it isn't going well, I have to talk myself out of keeping on trying until we get it. I'm a big fan of learning anyway, and during training, I'm learning how to best communicate what I want them to do so that they get it and get treats. I find it even more engaging than flipping the fishing pole with feather around for them to play with. We still do that of course, because it's good to just play sometimes too.



Things Ka and Zaia know:
-Touch nose to target (Zaia knows this better than Ka. He likes to swat at the chopstick instead)
-Come when called. Currently, we call them with 2 knocks on the floor. I think we need to move this to something better suited to outside (whistle?) eventually.
-Sit (Ka knows this better than Zaia. Actually, I'm not sure she knows this yet)

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Electric Mayhem Rising

Way back in September, Todd and Ali fired off a simple email for a Halloween costume idea: Are we in for Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem band? For those uninitiated to the band of the Muppets, these guys:



I was initially wary. Todd and Ali have previous expertise with Muppet construction. Their award winning costume in 2006 were a pair of Beakers, Dr. Honeydew's lab assistant(s). While Lee and I have had our share of elaborate costuming attempts in the past (which I expect I'll blog about retrospectively sometime) it seemed like stepping up to the Electric Mayhem required a whole 'nother level of commitment. Of course, that level of effort requires the optimal place to showcase our craft. A place, preferably with a costume contest, that would appreciate the love and care that would go into achieving Muppethood. We had several good contenders, but we ultimately decided to make our band debut at DNA Lounge's Halloween party on Halloween night. DNA Lounge is known in San Francisco as THE place to go and be if you're serious about quality Halloween costumes. The very prospect seemed daunting and yet appropriate.

Because I'm impatient, I'll just go ahead and jump to the end result. Read on to see the riveting (or maybe glue-gunning?) documentary behind-the-scenes look at "Electric Mayhem Rising"! (Warning, image and media heavy post ahead!)

Tada!

The original Electric Mayhem had 5 members and we only had 4 people. Turns out Zoot was off making a solo foray during Halloween and so the rest of us had to soldier bravely on without him. Yeah, that's it. Our first band practice was Oct. 11. It was a busy weekend for everyone, but we squeezed in a mad brainstorming session as well as a parts shopping spree where we closed out Michael's, JoAnn's Walmart and the Halloween Spirit Store in rapid succession.

Thanks to Todd's l33t screen capturing skillz, we each had our own master character sheet with which to derive our inspiration. My original plan was to build the muppet heads on a hardhat I have so that I could have some structure underneath whatever the head was made of to interface with my head, create a bit of an airspace and better distribute the weight. But I only had one hardhat and there were four of us. So we got some bicycle helmets at Walmart as the basic scaffold for all of us.

We decided that both Dr. Teeth and Animal had roughly spherical heads. Last year Ali had experimented with creating a Dr. Honeydew muppet to go with their Beaker costume but it was abandoned and the remaining papier mache ball, when cut in half would start both Dr. Teeth and Animal. I used exactly half of the ball and poked some zip ties through to tie into the zip ties through the bike helmet.

Tada! A wearable papier mache half-ball. Dr. Teeth's half had to be modified somewhat so it wouldn't be as wide as Animal's head so we made a cut up to the center and glued/stapled the overlapping ends.

Floyd and Janice's head shapes were no mere spheres. Lee and Todd started on Floyd's head shape since it was a simpler pear-shaped head. They started the fishbone spine using 14-gauge wire from Home Depot. Then they attached wire mesh that we found at Michael's as the base skin. Wielding only wire cutters and pliers against the irascible mesh, Lee and Todd emerged scarred and battle-worn but with a Floyd-shaped head. Todd would go on to fatten Floyd's head up with a layer of foam.


Janice's head was the trickiest of all. It was vaguely Kermit-shaped. But the real beauty of her head was her chin. What Muppet had a chin? But there it was, unmistakeable in the screenshot, so we had no choice but to give Janice a chin. With the learnings from Floyd's head creation, Todd and Ali further honed their wire shaping skills and wounds to create Janice's head.

Wire-form Janice head

With the head shapes established, there were many Muppet technologies we had to invent to add each character's signature look. We decided that Dr. Teeth would merely be a happy guy - his signature is his reflective gold tooth.

Dr. Teeth looking eerily like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy green head. Since we were all looking out of the character's mouth, we put a light, sheerish black fabric there, complete with tongues. A little hard to see out of, but impossible to see in!

Animal needed movable eyebrows, preferably controlled invisibly. To simplify the mechanism, I opted to default Animal's look to half-lidded with the movement being a more wide-eyed look. Animal does have an expression that involves almost fully closed eyes, but I left that out. I ended up using a partial Halloween wreath (black like eyebrows), tying some fishing line to it, threading it through the papier mache and sewing it to some velcro. The velcro would attach to the bike helmet underneath and serve as a chin strap. I could then open and close my mouth to move Animal's eyebrows. I did have a movable jaw for Animal, but I opted for manual jaw movement given that my chin was already attached to his eyebrows, I didn't want to get confused and raise my eyebrows to open Animal's mouth. Since the jaw movement was hinged through only paper and glue, I stuck the jaw wire through some plastic disks attached to the head for durability.

Janice needed to be able to pout. Lee came up with the idea of running fishing line through one strand of her hair, attach beads to the end so that she could tug on her hair to close up the mouth. The fishing line would of course be attached to her jaw.

Did I mention that Janice has a chin? How to mold wireform and foam to look like a Muppet chin? Well somehow, Ali made it work. And work it she did!

Floyd also employed what we ended up calling "M5 Muppet technology" to have a hair-controlled jaw (Floyd has a ponytail he can yank on). He had some additional challenges in the nose department. The initial nose color was unfortunately toxic to Muppet noses (styrofoam).

On the left is Floyd's nose on drugs. On the right is Floyd's nose out of rehab. Any questions?

Fortunately, the Electric Mayhem didn't travel around naked, even though Animal was close. Dr. Teeth modified a giant pink top hat with some additional feathers, a pimp costume from a Halloween Spirit store with some red fringe on the back. Animal wore his two-toned rock shirt and ripped pants. I also wore the requisite chain so that the rest of the band could keep him under wraps. (I also ended up sewing some Muppet gloves and booties for Animal.) Floyd wore his signature Sgt. Pepper jacket and cords. Janice was in her rock babydoll tee, miniskirt and sandals. They carried around their lighted guitars and Animal carried drumsticks to beat on everything I could get ahold of.

Then we were ready to take the stage at DNA Lounge. We were an instant hit! We got hugs. We got pictures. Each member of the band had their fan club. Some couldn't believe they were actually seeing the Electric Mayhem live and in person.

There were some that posed with us over and over again.











But the culmination of the evening was the costume contest and this was the reaction:


Which ended up with this as the result:

We took first place! At DNA Lounge! By a large enough margin that they had a run off for 2nd and 3rd place but not for first! Second place went to an amazing Predator and 3rd place went to Bender.



Additional pics

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Welcome Ka and Zaia!

Ka


Zaia

We went by the Milo mobile adoption event down at 4th Street in Berkeley today and brought home these two beauties! They are formerly named Ike and Clara, 4 month old brother and sister from a litter of five. As soon as I saw Ka (aka Ike) I knew I liked him. The lady at the adoption event let us hold both of them briefly. Ka really really wanted to jump down and play. Zaia was pretty nervous about all the sidewalk goings on and merely cuddled.

It took them several hours to wander out of their carrier once we put them in their own bathroom upstairs. Ka was lured out by the feathers we bought for them. Zaia is a little shyer but she soon followed her brother out. It wasn't long before they were exploring not just the bathroom, but also the adjoining playroom. Maybe they're still uncertain, but they were very polite about their exploration. By the end of the evening, I had two purring kittens in my lap just before bedtime. We're very happy to have them.

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A Taste of Margaritaville

My uncle once told me that if I only went to one concert in my entire life, to make it a Jimmy Buffett concert. Well, I've already seen more than one concert in my life and expect to make it to more, but Tuesday night I finally took my uncle's advice. And for the price of a lawn seat and an hour's drive after work, I was transported to the Jimmy Buffett brand of island living.

My first exposure to Jimmy Buffett's music was actually through my grandmother. She's responsible for my taste in show tunes when I would spend summer days with her watching Oklahoma, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, etc. One day, she asked me to put in a new tape (that's cassette for the younger generation) in the stereo that she wanted to listen to. I knew I liked it as soon as the steel drums started and songs of margaritas and cheeseburgers came out of the speakers. I was happily bopping to the beat, helping my grandmother prepare veggies for dinner when after a long, spoken intro, the next song came on. To my abject horror, I heard Jimmy sing, "Why don't we get drunk and screw?" over the speakers accompanied by a large crowd. I listen specifically to lyrics of songs, but I wasn't sure how widely among my family that was known. With a quick glance at my grandmother, certain that I would be in trouble if I seemed to enjoy the topic of a song that was strictly taboo with children of my age. I furrowed my brow and pretended to focus intently on the carrots I was chopping just in time for my grandmother to look over at me. She said, "Ooh, turn the volume up, will you? I like this song. I think it's funny." Then she went back to her task and missed the shocked pause it took me to register her words and go turn the music up.

Years later, sitting on a grass on rented chairs, with a barbecue sandwich dinner in my stomach, I stood up and cheered with a vast, multi-colored, pot-smoking, drunk and festive crowd as Jimmy took the stage with the Coral Reefer band. Whether he sang gleefully of parties, sailing and surfing or poignantly of lost loves and past accomplishments, the crowd danced, sang along, and cheered enthusiastically. On the jumbo-tron video screens (we were too far away from the stage to see the actual band) he showed videos of his travels both around the world and around the Bay Area and other Parrotheads he's played for in between live shots of the current concert. He wore a t-shirt, flower-printed shorts and went barefoot on the stage - clearly a man who has made a life of doing things he enjoys. That's not a bad thing to accomplish in your life, I thought.

And for about four hours in the middle of a work week, I got to escape to a little island town called Margaritaville. I know I want to be back again someday.

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Respect. Empower. Include

These are the guidelines Barack Obama has given his campaign as they strive to get him elected the next President of the United States.

It's a tall order. In the face of mistrust - is he Muslim? does he pal around with terrorists? will he raise my taxes? will he turn over the US to the hands of those who wish us harm? In the face of heated, passionate disagreements. In the face of fear. But it's what Obama requires of his campaign staff and volunteers. And it makes a difference in the thousands and millions who have volunteered, worked, called, fundraised, hoped. Hope has become contagious.

It makes a difference for me. Seven years ago, an entire world reached out to America in the wake of tragedy. But ever since then, all I've heard from my leaders was to fear, to hate, to distrust. To disrespect, disempower, exclude. I heard that I should pay attention to the worst of people in case they decide to wield that against me. That I should protect myself from harm. But it was isolating and tiring, looking at everyone warily, with suspicion. It certainly didn't make me feel good about the world I lived in and limited the life I could live and still feel safe.

Then in 2004, I heard a skinny guy with a funny name give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. And he told me that there are just as many things we have in common with one another than we have differences. That we want to provide for our families with decent wages. That we want our children to grow up healthy and strong with a bright future ahead. That we just want to be heard, respected and loved. And I thought to myself that I would be voting for that man for president one day. I just didn't know it would come a scant four years later. He has appealed to the good in all of us. To trust that as a whole, we are greater than the sum of our individual strengths. That to accomplish the great things that Americans have done in the past and can do in the future, we would have to put aside the fear and distrust and work together. And that it wouldn't necessarily be easy, but that we could be surprised at what we could do.

I have never been one to care that much about politics. Ten years ago, you couldn't have paid me to know who our elected officials were and what they stood for. This year, this historic election year, I AM paying attention with all my obsessive tendencies on display. Not only did I donate to a campaign for the first time, I donated multiple times. As I watched the primaries turn into the general election period, I paid attention not just to the policies but to the people and their expressions of hope. Those faces, those eyes - they keep me daring to believe that we can shed the atrocities of the past eight years and go back to the America I once thought I lived in.

In two weeks, we will know. And I hope that we will know a brighter future.

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Cat Juggling + Ninja Cat

Tonight's obession was YouTube videos of cats. I didn't even know they had hamster wheels for cats, let alone that cats could self-juggle.
The second video requires some patience with the beginning (about 17 seconds in) until the camera starts playing peek-a-boo with the cat.

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Impressions of a First-Time NaNoWriMo-er

Cheating a bit here. I wrote this the day after NaNoWriMo ended last year, Dec. 2, 2007. I hadn't quite gotten out of the habit of writing everyday yet (but it didn't take much longer) and I figured I might as well capture my first impressions while they were still fresh. As another November approaches, it's worth reminding myself what it was like that first time...


When I first heard of NaNoWriMo, I thought to myself that it was a crazy goal I’d never be able to achieve. “That’s for people who are more experienced/talented/serious in writing than I am,” I said to myself. “Maybe one day, I’ll be able to take on that challenge.” I wish I could remember exactly when that first thought first popped into my head, but I think it was about July or August of 2007.

I should have known better than to apply ‘Maybe one day’ to a challenge like this appearing in my life. You see, I have these obsessive, stubborn tendencies. Sometimes, it’s a fleeting concept in my day where I suddenly remember than I haven’t had any Filipino food in quite a while only I don’t know any good places nearby to get Filipino food. And so I’m off to the wonders of technology that is Google and the next thing you know, I’m going slightly out of my way on the way home so I can have take out for dinner. Sometimes it lasts several weeks or months when I get hold of a new video game so that I have to come home every day and play the latest Final Fantasy installment so that I can find out what happens in the story. So if I get an idea in my head, no matter how nonchalant I pretend I can be about it, I’ll still fixate enough so that the only cure is to actually do something about it.

And that’s not even engaging my competitive nature. I’ve tried to scale back on the urgency of my response to the idea of competition - I’ve actually used that tendency for evil, to the detriment of personal relationships and my happiness in the past and I’ve learned to be leery of its power. But as soon as my inner competitor whispered, “I bet you can’t do it.”, my knee jerk reaction was “Oh yeah? Watch me!”

All I needed was someone I knew who had done it to tell me it’s not as bad and scary as it appeared to be. That came in the form of a friend in my writing group who, without my prompting, announced that she had just completed her own novel writing month in August ahead of the official November event. And that it wasn’t that bad. So I did what any rational, obsessive, competitive planner would do: I researched the project, bought the No Plot, No Problem book and researched what tools and resources I would need to have in place in order to succeed at it. I decided that I would need a laptop despite previously decrying their use for ergonomic reasons so that I would be able to transport myself and my creativity to various points of inspiration and interest aside from my home office. Once I gave myself permission to do research, I went on to research Mac laptops (which I’ve never previously owned) because they seemed to be more creative than the PC desktops I’ve owned in the past. I didn’t have the wherewithal to justify buying a brand new top of the line Mac laptop so off I went to Ebay, which I’ve never used, so I could get a better deal and still have an out. That if I didn’t actually do NaNoWriMo, I didn’t spend full price so it would be okay. Of course I still had to support my physical health so I had to research accessories that would enable me to move around with a laptop without killing my wrists and hands as I wrote my 1667 words a day for an entire month. And I did this all before October so that I would have time to teach myself how to use a Mac and the new novel-writing software (also researched) so it wouldn’t slow me down.

Yet in October, I was still telling people that I was only considering NaNoWriMo, but not really committed to it. Even as I tried to convince other friends with writing tendencies, I still sidled up to the idea, stating only that I was considering doing it. I finally gave up pretending on October 5th when I signed up on the official NaNoWriMo.org website and joined the community of largely younger and very enthusiastic writers from all around the world waiting for the commencement of November. I was and still am enamored of the concept that community can provide powerful momentum to accomplish more than the individual, even with such a typically solitary endeavor as writing. And as I found out more about the organization and founder that started NaNoWriMo, I was inspired by the example of one man starting a movement and event that essentially encouraged, challenged and supported anyone who had ever dreamed and wanted to follow that dream. And what an extra bonus that the birth of NaNoWriMo happened just down the road from my house! I took that to mean that I should go ahead and go for it.

As instructed by the No Plot, No Problem book, I wasn’t supposed to start with a plot or work too extensively on my novel until a week prior to November 1st. Have I mentioned yet that I have a planner mindset? I think I managed to last until a week and a half before November. I had a pair of characters, a general conflict and sat down to write 59 phrases that was my plot outline. I vowed to set my daily goal to 2000 words, rounding up the 1667 so that I would have a buffer if I had some bad writing days.

I almost didn’t go to the pre-November kickoff party in San Francisco. But it was there that I made some key writing buddy friends that I would see through the month of November at write-ins or through NaNoMails, who kept me going. I also took the opportunity to thank Chris Baty, NaNoWriMo’s founder for creating and living such an inspiring vision. I’m sure he hears it every day, but I wanted to add my voice to the numerous others whose lives he has touched and made for the better.

To borrow from the NaNoWriMo Forums, Things I Learned from NaNoWrimo in November:

- I’m goal oriented. Actually, it’s not so much that I didn’t know I was goal oriented. It was that I had to negotiate my goals with myself ahead of time. For example, I gave myself 2000 words per day. On the first weekend, I hit 2000 and stopped even though I still had time during the day to get ahead of the schedule. The following weekend, I made sure to give myself notice that I would do double word count days on weekends so I could keep going.

- I can keep writing what happens next in the story even if I don’t actually know what happens next. This started kicking in about mid-way through the story when I started deviating significantly from my outline and I thought I would have to take a break and restructure the rest of the outline. Turns out, I still wrote 2000 words during those days. My goal-reaching fu is stronger than my path-finding fu.

- Fingerless gloves help keep my typing longer because my hands are nice and toasty. If they’re pirate fingerless gloves, my hands can go ’arrr!’ at the keyboard and intimidate the keys into submission.

- I will never win a word war in IM chats, but in four 15 minute wars with appropriate breaks, I can make my daily word count. Also, I can do self word wars, but it’s only slightly less effective because my in between breaks tend to go longer than the IM chat rooms.

- Figuring out plots and characters is a lot like puzzle solving, only I’m the one making the pieces and seeing where they fit. This is trickier than it sounds and is also a lot of fun.

- I like writing dialogue more than I like writing descriptions of people, places and things.

- I often wonder how little justice I’m doing to the dramatic scenes in my story when I’m writing for quantity.

- I don’t snack or drink nearly as much as I expected while writing.

- Singing along with my iPod is a great mini-writing break activity. This works better when I’m not out writing in public.

- 50,000 words is a stronger goal than finishing the story. My momentum went down as soon as I hit 50k even though I’d already negotiated with myself that I wanted to finish the actual story in November.

- I’m afraid of writing endings. This may be because I don’t want stories to end but if I attach a goal to it, I’ll probably end up doing it anyway.

- My inner editor likes to tell me how cliche my plot ideas, word choices, character quirks are. It’s liberating to write anyway, and let them yammer away in the corner. It does help that I let it correct spelling mistakes as I wrote. Kept ‘em happy.

- I need to put more dysfunctional traits in my characters. Otherwise, they’re boring.

- Backup my work. Back it up redundantly. Assigning my obsessive trait to the job of watching over the backing up process is good delegation.

It’s now December 2nd and I’m wandering around trying to find something to do, which is what led me to write this piece to begin with. I suppose with one of my favorite holidays coming up, I should get into the spirit. But before I let go, I’ve started making a list of changes I want to put into the editing when I pick up this year’s story again. And I already have something in mind for next year’s novel.
PS: I just noticed that I didn’t make minimum daily 1667 word count with this piece and that should be okay. Right? (1666, argh!)

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Neil Gaiman

We went to see Neil Gaiman ('gay-mun' instead of 'guy-mun'. People kept thinking I was saying 'Neil Diamond' when I mispronounced his name) this past weekend. The author of Stardust, the Sandman comics and Good Omens, with Terry Pratchett was in town to do a reading of his latest children's book, The Graveyard Book.


I'd never seen him before aside from his book jacket pictures and he was a very funny, engaging public speaker. We also received signed copies of The Graveyard Book with our tickets which was nice. He read Chapter 6 to us and now I'll have his accent in my head as I read the rest of the story. I envy him his imaginative story ideas. I wish my brain worked more like that. The Graveyard Book tells the story of a boy being brought up by dead people/ghosts/etc. in a graveyard. His family was killed by someone and is looking to kill him too. The chapter we got to hear was about the boy, Nobody Owens, aka, Bod, dealing with a couple of school bullies at school with his graveyard training ways. It was a pretty long chapter, especially read aloud like that, but it never felt boring. I was just worried he would leave us with a cliff-hanger and I would have to read the rest of the book on the way home. Thankfully, he did end the chapter with a mini-conclusion with only hints at the larger conflict ahead.

He's a very good public speaker. I'm sure the British accent helps. We got to preview clips of his next film from one of his books due out in February, Coraline. It's being done in stop motion animation by the same director that did Nightmare Before Christmas. I hadn't even heard about the book/film before then but I'm looking forward to it.

Then he answered some audience submitted questions. My favorite response he did was when he described the best advice someone had given him on the writing process. I don't remember who it was that had written it, but the suggestion was to have a room/place/mindset where you had a choice of either writing or doing absolutely nothing. That way you would still have a choice and avoid the automatic procrastination that comes with 'YOU MUST WRITE OR YOU FAIL' but if you do choose to do absolutely nothing, you'll get bored enough to start writing again. I think I'll have to adopt that mindset in our hobby room upstairs for this coming November.

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Bloggishness

Seems this blog thing is the new hotness (and no, I'm not an early adopter, why do you ask?). It's no coincidence whatsoever that I'm trying out blogging again roughly a month before I tackle my second year at National Novel Writing Month. Something about writing practice. I've tried blogging before and either let it languish or it was project specific and the project's done. So I'm trying again and seeing if this is a habit I can maintain. My previous failures at consistent blogging probably has more to do with my attention span with new shiny things (minimal) as well as my internet hermit tendencies (do I really have to post this?). So I gave myself a broader umbrella of topics that I could write about so that I can be as distracted as I want to be. I should also give myself a goal/schedule when I should post things if I really wanted this to work, but I'll have to think on that some more.

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