I woke up this morning and the weather guy said there is a chance of snow on Friday. Egads! The Christmas Tree Cutting Party is on Saturday, so I arranged to take Friday off so I can get to the ranch before things get nasty weather wise. It's supposed to be a low of 26 at the ranch on Friday night. Apparently, this weather thing will be over on Saturday, so the party itself will probably be fairly nice, if a little chilly.

This week is always sort of hectic, because we've just come off a holiday and embark immediately into the fray of the party. We've been at or near 200 people for the last few years, and pretty much everything is done in-house. Jose started working on the vegetarian posole a few weeks ago. My dad made and froze dough for about 30 loaves of bread on Saturday. My mom and Liv spent most of yesterday working on cutting up veggies for roasting. I think the meat order has been placed at the City Meat Market for the pork and brisket. There's some sort of salad thing involved. We're picking up the kegs on Saturday, and we've stocked up on water, soft drinks and wine.

It's been awhile since I've been there a full day early. We were up there the weekend before Thanksgiving and got a lot of shit for the party done, but there will be plenty to do when we're up there.

And this will be Celosa's first Christmas Tree Cutting Party. I suspect that she'll have the time of her life. She loves pretty much ever single person she's ever met in her entire life. So having 200 people in her favorite place in the world, many who will give her food, will be just wonderful. And her most recent Very Bestest of Best Friends, Chicken, came home with Liv for Thanksgiving and is staying for the whole month. So they get to play together with 200 people.

This will be the first year in a long time where I won't be looking for my own tree. For the last two years, Graham has gotten really congested and sneezy in December, and we think it might be because of the cedar that we cut at the ranch. So probably on Sunday, we'll buy a tree at Home Depot.

Snow! On Friday! How fucking weird is that? And it snowed last year too. And on Christmas Eve 2004. Weird weather.

Tags: family, holiday, party, ranch

The best holiday special episode in the history of holiday special episodes.
This is the full 20something minutes. Enjoy.

There's been drama this year regarding Thanksgiving. It started a few weeks ago, when my dad mentioned that my mom was thinking about doing a funky Southwestern style turkey involving a 30 cloves of garlic, 6 pasilla chiles, some orange juice, port, honey and nutmeg. It actually does look pretty good. At first, the reaction was best described as "concern," mainly from my dad and Graham. I stayed relatively neutral, though I also had my doubts that my mom was going to be able to pull this off. Then, as Thanksgiving drew closer, there were quiet plans for the preparation of a backup turkey or, as Jose called it, a protest turkey. On Sunday, there was a full on revolt, and my mom conceeded defeat.

The turkey this year will be a traditional turkey, stuffed with my mom's bread stuffing. Jose is making his sweet potatoes, I think there will be green beans tossed with almonds. Olivia is doing some sort of parsnip dish, and Claudia will be cooking the traditional Thanksgiving egg noodles. I am making a wild mushroom pate. I think the cranberry relish has already been made.

For dessert, Jose has acquired a pecan pie, Graham is making two pumkin pies, Liv is making a tunnel of fudge cake, and I think Claudia is making an apple pie.

I suspect none of us will be able to move on Thursday evening. And I promised my mom that one day, we'll try her fancy Mexican turkey, but it will have to be on a less emotionally charged day.

Tags: family, food, holiday

Those of you on RSS readers, get your ass over here and watch the video. You will thank me.

ETA:


For comparison.

Tags: things that make 'stina happy

On Saturday morning, as planned, Liv, Graham, Crianza, Chicken and Celosa were driving down 290 with me at a wholely unreasonable hour. Right at Hempstead, around 7:30 am, we noticed a billboard in a field that said "Civil War Weekend" and I immediately exited. We followed the directional signs that said "Civil War Reenactment this way" and ended up on Liendo Plantation. Right as we drove in, we were greeted by a lynched mannequin hanging from a tree with the word "spy" on it. We passed a check-in station, and then drove on past the US encampment. The camps were using canvas pup-tents, that appeared to be laid out pretty orderly, and it looked like people were just getting up for the day. Someone in the car commented that our Obama sticker on the back of the car was probably really foreign to this sort of setting, but then we were passed by a small truck with a "war is not the answer" sticker and peace sign. A small platoon of US soldiers, in their blue wool uniforms, was marching down the road, and we followed slowly behind. We ultimately ended up near a big house with lots of larger canvas tents set up around it, but we figured that we were there way too early for anything actually to be going on. Liv and Graham were snapping pictures while I drove through the various encampments. Ultimately, we decided that a) we were way too early to see anything, and b) my parents would kill us if we didn't get Liv to the ranch sooner rather than later.

So, we left Liendo Plantation, vowing to return once we figured out what the schedule of events was. We got to the ranch about 45 minutes later, met up with my parents about a half-hour after that, and crashed for mid-morning naps about half an hour after that. Except Chicken and Celosa, who declared each other very best of friends and played for about 16 hours straight.

The ranch was lovely. It was raining when we picked up Liv and got her to the ranch, but by the time we woke up from our naps, the rain had stopped, and we were able to spend time both outside and inside. I took on decorating the house for the Christmas Tree Cutting Party, while the menfolk went for wood for the fire. We got some crap done inside, and then I made puff pastry sticky buns, my dad made some awesome cibatta, I made some roasted vegetables (which Graham kept an eye on the fire) we had barbeque from Snows. Everyone went to bed relatively early, and Chicken and Celosa started their whole run around and wrestle routine all over again at six the next morning.

Liv and Graham found out via someone's iPhone that there were battles scheduled at 2:00 on both Saturday and Sunday, so we decided to leave our pooches with our parents and head back to Hempstead around one on Sunday. Our timing was perfect: after paying $10 a head, we pulled into a space around 1:45 and walked to the battlefield right at two. The parking lot that had been compeltely empty at 7:30 the previous morning was nearly packed. There were vendors in canvas tents set up in tents by the big house and near the battlefield, and we walked through a mock hospital to get to the battlefield. A good twenty to thirty percent of the population at this thing was in some sort of period dress. We were informed that the place we initially chose to stand was where some cavelry would be coming through, so we had to move closer to the crowd. The crowd was actually pretty big, and there were even bleachers set up so some people had better views.

We were there not a minute when the first cannon fired. It was loud. And with every subsequent cannon blast, I jumped. Graham laughed at me. Soon, we took a look at the field and saw that the numbers were significantly skewed. There were probably three times as many confederate troops as there were federal, though the feds had better firepower. There was also some cavelry movement on the far side of the field that we couldn't really see. The feds had the left side of the field and the rebels had the right, and by and large, each sent about half of their people to the middle to fight. "Fighting" generally consisted of shooting their guns in the general direction of the other side. The feds had a couple of cannons with them, and they used them for awhile until the rebs were able to drive them back and leave the cannons. Every now and then someone would die.

For the first twenty minutes or so, we watched with only our own commentary and that of the people around us. I think that the guy in front of us was highly amused by my comments and questions. But then we moved closer to the middle of the field, and we heard the play-by-play on the loudspeakers. This was clearly a pro-Confederacy event, and we started getting a little uncomfortable. Liv said she heard something about coffee drinking Yankees. Graham started talking louder and louder about his being a Yankee. Eventually we found Liv, and we decided that a) it was probably best that we get Graham out of there before real violence ensued, b) it probably was a good call to beat traffic and c) Liv said the port-a-potties were disgusting. We took our time leaving, though, and we stopped in a bunch of the vendor tents. A lot of them had gear for the reenactors: uniforms, hats, dresses, weaponry. Some of them had general Confederacy pride stuff. The vendors were all wearing period clothing and they sort of talked period. No one was rude or mean or anything, but I think we generally were a little uncomfortable by the whole thing.

When we hit the highway again, we got stuck in a mini-traffic jam because the folks on the highway slowed down to gwak at the Civil War Reenactment taking place in a random field on an otherwise unremarkable Sunday afternoon.

Liv later researched and discovered that the battle we saw was a sort of "what if" and not a battle that actually took place in the Civil War. In some ways, I'm sure that this makes the action a little more fun, in that the result isn't preordained like the real battles are. The various leaders can try out different tactics that were popular at the time and see what happens. On the other hand, there was a bit of a creepy "South shoudla won" vibe to the whole thing.

Having grown up in a state that was part of the Confederacy, but ended up in a state that continues to be part of the Union, I've never really understood the concept of taking sides. I fully understand that the Civil War wasn't entirely about slavery, and a good hunk of the people who fought for the South didn't have slaves and never would. But to pretend that slavery wasn't a big part of it is being really, really blind. And ultimately, we're one big ass country, so we're both sides, regardless of where we grew up and were raised. Graham has Texas and Ohio flags tattooed to is shoulders, and he joked that they'd have been a little mystified by him if and when they got around to lynching him too for being a spy. I can honestly say that I've never seen this sort of Confederacy thing before in all of my years of being in Texas. I think part of it is that Texans are generally prouder of being Texan than any of the various countries we've been. I mean most of the conflict in the state prior to the 1840s was with points south, not with Yankees. So if we're going to enthusiastically waive some non-US flag, it's going to be the Lone Star.

Graham said that this whole thing proved that rednecks, too, can be dorks. And the level of detail that went into this thing was pretty impressive. Unforms, tents, equipment, saddles, weaponry. There were food and craft demonstrations near the big house, and I got the impression that the Civil War Reenactment gear business is a brisk one.

It was a strange, strange thing, and I'm so glad we made it. Next year we may show up to peace protest.

Tags: history, surreal, weekend update

My sister Olivia is coming to Houston for an extended Thanksgiving tonight. Apparently, I foolishly said in an e-mail upon the inquiry if someone would be willing to pick Liv and chicken up from a redeye flight, "Celosa will be overjoyed to pick up chicken."

Celosa, it turns out, can't drive. So tomorrow morning, at 6:03, Chicken and Liv land at the Houston Intercontinental airport, and Celosa and I, with a sleepy Graham and Crianza, will be there to pick them up. We're going straight from the airport to the ranch.

I've heard that my parents are going to make the trek to Lexington tomorrow morning to pick up barbeque at Snows, so the early morning may be worth it. Plus, naps at the ranch are always appropriate, so sleep deprivation can be well made up for.

This week always sucks. I think that the holiday is just coming up, and with relatives already making it here, it's hard not to feel that way. But I have a few more days of work, and actual work to do.

And then things get crazy quick. The Christmas Tree Cutting Party is in two weeks, and we're getting ready for it this weekend. Thanksgiving is already caused some drama, as my mom has threatened to monkey around with the turkey. And I have no idea what to get anyone for Christmas.

From the Wall Street Journal Health Blog.

The Health Blog just got an email from Pfizer informing us that some people feel guilty or sad about leaving their dogs behind when they travel for the holidays.

And a vet who works for Pfizer said that if you’re “experiencing tough economic times,” the “unconditional love from your family dog can go a long way toward helping your family manage that extra stress.”

In fact, Pfizer feels so strongly about this stuff that the company has launched a Twitter feed called “Dog On Board” in order to “help families talk about including their dog in their family holiday.”

Heartwarming and touching, no? And as a pet owner, I wholeheartedly agree that doggies (and kitty cats, hell even fish) can alieviate holiday stress. Unconditional love, and such. I generally take my dogs whereever I go for the holidays. They're part of the family, so of course they'll spend the holidays with us.

Why is a multinational drug company getting into your business about what you do with your dog for Thanksgiving?

Pfizer sells Cerenia, a drug for dogs that’s approved by the FDA to prevent vomiting caused by motion sickness. The drug is mentioned in email Pfizer sent us. And the Twitter feed does disclose the company’s agenda — the drug’s name is in the top corner of the page, and the small print says the feed is “sponsored by Pfizer Animal Health to introduce Cerenia.”

My dogs are actually wonderful in the car. In a lifetime of dog ownership, I've never had a dog that gets carsick, so Pfizer's entreaties are wasted on me. But jesus...

Tags: dogs

Last year, I had a bit of a fight with my healthcare provider over whether I needed a PAP smear to get my birth control prescription refilled.

So I'm intrigued by the outrage and angst over the new recommendations regarding mamography. I'm 36, so I haven't had the boob squishing machine experience yet. And I don't think that I'm going to fight particularly hard to get one for the next 15 years or so, unless I think something is wrong.

I don't have a family history on either side of the family for breast cancer. I don't have any of the risk factors for breast cancer, and I'm very conscious about the utilization of medical resources. (The tool indicates that I have an 8% chance of getting breast cancer in my lifetime, and a 0.03% chance of getting it in the next five years. Interestingly, those numbers increase to 11.3% and 0.04% if I answer that I'm white instead of Hispanic.)

So, unless my doctor convinces me that a mamogram is necessary, I'll forego the experience until I'm 50.

The key here is looking at the general data on breast cancer and applying it to me and my own medical history. If I had a mother, two aunts and a few grandmothers and cousins with breast cancer, then my analysis would be altered. And I recognize that younger women do get breast cancer, well before 50, as I recognize that PAP smears pick up cervical cancers (though they pick up more false positives than real positives)). I have friends who have had breast and cervical cancers in their 30s. And I expect that I'll have more friends who experience cancers in their 40s.

But these screenings, like any other medical intervention, supposed to be tailored to the risks for the individual patient, not the population as a whole. And so it's very possible that the recommendations for the population do not apply to the individuals.

Tags: healthcare

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I knew they'd catch on sooner or later. 40 years of indoctrination, though, not bad. Not bad at all.

I was thinking about Relampago after writing my earlier post about him and kids, and earlier today, I went back and read a lot of posts under his tag. I feel his absence still, but it's not as painful of an ache. I miss him terribly, but I've reached the point that I smile more when I think about him than cry.

Then I watched some of these videos and I ended up all out bawling in my office. The link takes you to ten vidoes of dogs welcoming their soldier owners home from prolonged absence. Of course it's heartwarming. It must be noted that with the bawling, there was a lot of giggling.

I'm very used to these types of scenes, because I've been through them a lot.

I first got Relampago at ten weeks when I came home for Chistmas break in mid-December 1992. I went back to school in mid-January, and I left him with my parents. We'd had four weeks together, but I wasn't sure that he'd know me when I came back in late-March for Spring break. I shouldn't have worried. He was was overjoyed to see me. He was six months old, and he'd spent most of his life at that point without me, but he knew that he was mine. For the week that I was home, he was constantly by my side.

Back to school and home again for three more semesters, and then off to England for almost a year. Every time we were separated, the reunion was enthusiastic and joyful and full of hopping and love and kisses. Usually he'd go to the airport with whoever was picking me up, and he'd end up sitting on my lap all the way home telling me how much he missed me and how happy he was that I was home.

Relampago always had separation anxiety issues, though, and I'm sure it was my leaving for prolonged periods that casused it.

In 1999, I'd left him in Houston for six weeks I'd tried to move to DC to find work, and he was anxious about another separation. I came back to Houston depressed and dejected, feeling utterly worthless, and his reaction to my homecoming was one of the things that kept me sane afterwards. When I moved to Berkeley six months later, I had to leave him again. It took me three months, but I finally found housing for us in June of 2000, and he flew out to Oakland to meet me. The reunion in the airport was loud and obnoxious and full of overjoyed love.

After that, we were never separated for very long. Maybe a week here and there for a trip he couldn't go with me on, but generally we were together non-stop for the last eight years of his life. He always knew, though, when I was planning on going somewhere. The funniest was when we moved back to Houston in March of 2002. I was packing the car, and he was increasingly getting nervous about the whole thing. Finally, he couldn't take it any more and he hopped in the car and refused to get out. He stayed in there for hours, staying there when timur_i_lang and I went to get something to eat. I don't think he agreed to get out of the car until we were half way to LA.

When I moved back to Houston, he either stayed at my house and someone from the family moved in or he went to my parents' house. All reunions were full of enthusiastic love, and when Crianza came into our lives, they'd fight over who got to be petted more. It'd take him a day or two to make sure that I was actually home and not leaving him again.

Whenever I was away from home for prolonged periods, it was Relampago that I missed the most. Everyone else I could talk to, get e-mails from. Contact with Relampago, though, was only through stories and assurances that he was ok. I still will ask about the dogs when I'm away from them. Calling in to my mom every day or so when I'm away. Hell even if I'm just gone for work, I'll ask about them if I talk to Graham.

I know that unconditional love that is literally thrown at you when you come home after a prolonged absence. And I know that feeling of unmitigated relief that your dog still knows you and loves you best even though you were so cruel as to be gone for so long.

Tags: memories, politics: war, relampago

From the beginning to about 3:35.

It's not my favorite movie, though it's among my favorites. But this scene is just, in my opinion, perfect. I think it's the pan out at the end, so the mass pandemonium is seen from afar, that really makes the scene work for me. I could watch it again and again.

Perfect.

What are your favorite scenes?

Tags: movies

Animal Planet has a series called "Dogs 101" that I occasionally watch. It profiles the various breeds, and I think it's generally pretty accurate. Catching up on my puli listerv, I discovered that the puli segment (for some reason, Discovery's websites won't let you embed) has finally been filmed and aired. Many of the people on the listerv's dogs were in the segment, and I think that they were filmed in the summer.

It's actually a very good description of the breed. The puppies in the segment were 7 1/2 weeks old when they were filmed, a little younger than Celosa was when she came home to us. Most of the people on the listerv were pretty satisfied with the segment. Puli people are in a constant state of correction and explanation of the breed, so non-puli people talking about pulik is always taken with a massive grain of salt.

The only quibble on the listserv was the statement pulik being better in a household with older children. Many of the members related their own stories of raising little kids with pulik, and by and large, it seemed pretty positive. As someone who's thinking about bringing young ones into my life in the next few years, I got a little concerned. But then I remembered my own upbringing.

Pisco, my parents' first puli, was about two and a half years old when I was born. There are fantastic pictures of me taking naps with him, and he apparently loved me instantly. Unfortunately, he was hit by a car when I was about a year old. My parents quickly got Pancita and Picante after he died, and they were puppies around the time Jose was born. Pancita was 11 months old the first time she went into heat, and as my dad likes to say in reference to the doggie birth control pills my veternarian uncle gave him, "You get what you pay for." A few weeks later, around the time Claudia was born, there was a litter of six puppies. The pictures of the baby girl and the baby puppies were ridiculously cute. Pancita never seemed to mind that Jose and I played with her puppies.* I remember that the dogs thought that Olivia was the best thing EVER when she was a baby. Pancita used to camp out under her high chair and clean up all of the fallen food. None of us were ever hurt or injured by the dogs, and the dogs came out of it relatively unscathed. Pancita and Picante died in the mid-80s, and Chispa came into the family in 1989. I was 16 and Olivia was 11, so at that point, I suppose we were "older" kids.

Relampago was ridiculously good with kids. Which was strange because he didn't really like people in general very much. He liked individuals, sure, but he was generally suspicious of most people. In particular, he hated anyone who made sudden moves. Except for small kids. I remember one time in particular, some friends of my family brought two developmentally disabled two-year-olds to the house. The boys were terribly adorable, and Relampago instantly gravitated to them. When they first got there, he was insanely curious. They were in their parents' arms, and he kept hopping up to sniff the boys. At some point, their parents let them down to walk, and Relampago hovered nearby, not letting them out of his sight. He stood still to let them pet him, and he let them fall into him without incident. The entire hour or two they were at the house, he didn't let them out of his sight. At the Christmas tree cutting party, he was always pretty good with the little ones, too. He knew that they were easy marks for food, but he was never agressive in taking food from them, and he always let them pet him. On walks, especially at Hermann park where there were likely to be large masses of kids, people would always come over to ask about him (and later Crianza). Relampago was wonderful at letting small kids, sometimes in large groups, come up to him and pet him. He would patiently stand there while the kids would pet him and ask questions about his fur. Crianza was grateful to have someone who was a little less skittish than she take the brunt of the attention from strangers.

Crianza, as I said, is skittish. I don't think it's a kid thing in particular, but a people thing. She has been known to play soccer with some six year old girls at the Christmas Tree Cutting Party, and she's happy to accept food from people of all ages. I'm actually very curious to see how she'll be this year, given that her sister will be attending for the first time. Celosa tends to help draw Crianza out of her shell. I think Crianza doesn't want all of the attention to go to Celosa, so she's willing to be more social. Either that or Celosa has shown her that it's not as bad as people think it is.

And Celosa... Obviously, she only has ten months of experience to draw on. But I think she'll be fine. My only real worry with her and little kids is her, er, boundless enthusiasm. She may accidently knock someone over, oblivious to her own strength and speed. But she's really a sweet dog, and not agressive at all. She's had encounters with two kids so far. One was a little girl of about 14 to 20 months that wandered onto our front porch a few months ago. She saw Celosa in the window and wanted to say hi. Celosa came outside, and under very strict supervision, the two little ones explored each other. Celosa was very good about sitting still (not something she's known for) while the little girl petted her, and the only mishap was when Celosa tried to kiss the girl. Every one came away laughing.

The other was a little boy of three who came to the ranch in early September. He had been bitten a few days previously by a dog (from the descrption, it seems like it was a provoked bite), and he was in a "I'm afraid of dogs" stage. After an hour of convincing him that Celosa was a puppy and unlike the other dog, he allowed her to come outside with him. Celosa was great, but she was also curious and went up to sniff the boy. Before any of us could advise him that it was a bad, bad idea, the boy ran. Celosa thought that this was a great game, and ran the other way, to cut the boy off at the pass and show off how good of a herder she was. After a few attempts of trying to get away from her, it didn't take very long for the boy to realize that a) Celosa was faster than he was, b) Celosa was much, much, much smarter at playing chase than he was, and c) running was making things worse, not better. Celosa was awesome, though. She came back to me as soon as she was called, even though I know she would have continued her game of chase. There were tears, but they were tears of panic. Celosa never touched the boy.

The Christmas Tree Cutting Party is in a few weeks, and there will be a lot of kids there of all ages. I'll be interested to see how the pulik are with them. I suspect that they'll be fine, and they'll end up eating a lot. Celosa loves people, and so a couple hundred who come to the ranch just to see her will totally make her day.

*Chueco, who was named "crooked" in Spanish because two year old Jose dropped him when he was itty bitty and he limped for a day or two, went to my uncle who lived in Dallas at the time. Duchess went to my uncle in Pennsylvania. Brujo, Spanish for "warlock" and Morangie, part of the name of a single malt scotch, went to one of my dad's colleagues. Lucy and Jalapeno went to the ranch manager. Jalapeno was unfortunately killed as a fairly young dog when he got kicked by a horse. Chueco and Duchess were my uncles' respective soulmate dogs, and both lived about 16 years.

Tags: celosa, chispa, crianza, dogs, memories, puli, relampago

So everyone is talking about the wall going down in October of 1989. I was a junior in high school, 16 years old, and I understood, sort of, what it meant, but I didn't really.

Two years later, though, I gained a lot more insight. When I graduated from high school in 1991, my parents gave me a Eurail pass and a plane ticket to Paris. Of course, they didn't want me to go by myself, so they sent my 16 year old brother along with me. In early June 1991, we spent a few days in Paris, and then we took a night train to Berlin. My godfather was attending the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Berlin, and he offered to let me and Jose stay in a room in his hotel suite for almost a week.

The first night we got there, we had a wonderful dinner with a bunch of the other scientists and physicians from the conference at a busy restaurant on the West side. The food was delicious, and the company was great. At the end of the night, the bill was presented, and we discovered that the restaurant only took Diner's Club. No one, it turns out, had Diner's Club, so everyone dug into their pockets and somehow or another, in at least six different currencies, we came up with the tab.

Layne was in conferences most of the day, but his then-partner was free, as was a Swedish friend who was attending the conference with her father. So Jose, Sandy, Katerina and I spent our days wandering around Berlin. Berlin was totally confused at that point. The West was full of shops and beautiful parks and the zoo, and transportation was easy. The East, though, was still pretty regimented. The taxi drivers didn't know anything about the other side, so they'd drop us off at the Brandenburg gates and make us find a native taxi driver for the rest of the journey if we were planning on crossing the city from one side to the other.

To our surprise, a pretty good hunk of the Wall was still up, though tourists could chip off pieces. I think I still have an earring somewhere made out of a piece of the wall, and we got a much larger piece for Layne that's still on a bookshelf at his house on Lake Conroe. A museum was right on the West side of the wall, near the Gates, dedicated to the daring escape attempts of various East Germans over the previous 40 years. Vendors were selling all sorts of East German and Soviet artifacts on the street: Jose bought a Soviet military cap.

The East side seemed very grey. There didn't seem to be many plants or flowers, and the streets seemed narrower and straighter than they did on the West side. And it seemed stark. There didn't seem to be as many people on the streets as there were on the other side. Probably a lot of that had to do with the fact that there weren't that many businesses there yet, no real place to go or congregate. We didn't really go deep into the East Side of the Berlin, but I get the impression that was because there wasn't really much to see there. We stopped somewhere for a sandwich and a beer, and the people were very friendly, if cautious. Later, we got terribly lost going to an official dinner on the East side, because the taxi driver had no clue how to get there. The building was very nice, and there was an interior garden. I suspect it had previously been a government run building.

On the weekend, after the conference was over, a bigger group of us decided to take a ferry ride on Jungfernsee lake and then walk from the lake to Cecilienhof in Potsdam, where the the Potsdam conference was held after WWII. This was, I think, the most interesting part of the trip, because none of this part of Germany had been open to Westerners. The city, I felt, was quasi-Western, but the countryside had been very clearly East German. The lake ride was beautiful; we kept looking at the magnificient houses on the shore that probably had few western eyes on them in the last 50 years and whose ownership was probably in dispute at the time. And the walk to Potsdam was long, down a picturesque tree-lined road but interesting. At some point, we passed a truck load of soldiers, and we noticed that they were Russian. Children of the cold-war, we tensed when we saw them, thinking that they'd react badly to people walking freely on communist soil. But I think they were just as confused about the situation as we were, and they passed us by without paying much attention. Later, we passed a post or garrison or some other sort of military spot with more soldiers. And again, they didn't seem too concerned with us.

I think the next day, Jose and I went off to Munich, then Rome, Florence, Barcelona, Madrid and back to Paris.

Berlin in 1991 was probably less confused and strange than it was in 1989, but it very much felt like a city trying to figure out how to put itself back together again. I think the most striking part for me was running into those Russian soldiers in the countryside. I'd been indoctrinated my movies and news and history lessons on communism into thinking of Russian soldiers as my most feared enemy, the people most likely of any in the world to do me harm. By 1991, that indoctrination had worn a little, but when I saw them I still thought about the fact that I was on what had been their turf until very, very recently. Would they be hostile? Were they still trying to hang on? Did they cede the city, as it'd been partially Western, but want to hang on to the country? But they just passed me and my group by, and went on their way.

I haven't been back to Berlin since 1991, and I suspect that it's more integrated now: a complete city instead of two halves. I think, though, that I like my memories of it; I feel like I got to see history as it was happening.

Tags: 'stina, history, memories, travel, vacation

Celosa and Crianza were kind enough to let me and Graham take them to the dog park on Saturday.

We were later than expected getting there, as Graham and I somehow found ourselves in a karaoke bar (the Cellar Bar*) until two the previous morning. I hasten to add that Graham went nowhere near the karaoke mike. He retreated to the patio as soon as we sat down, and stayed out there for two of the three hours we were there. The last hour, he found the bar's Wii and played baseball. I, on the other hand, made it up to the mike three or four times, and my voice was a little scratchy the next morning.

The dogs, though, cared nothing for karaoke hangovers, and as soon as they found out we were going on an excursion, they sang their praises and joy.

The dog park parking lot wasn't as full as I've seen it in the past, but there were a lot of dogs there. When we walked into the small dog part, Celosa immediately took off to explore the environs. Crianza stuck with me and Graham at first, checking out a box of 8 week old dauchsunds, jumping on my lap while chatting with a three month old lab/border collie, and otherwise meeting the same dogs that we did. But as our time at the dog park wore on, Crianza became more and more adventureous. Two, three years ago, she wouldn't have let any dog come up to her for a sniff, and her sole interaction with the other dogs would be to tell them to go away from me and Graham. But the longer we stayed at the dog park, the more Crianza would interact. At first, it was her normal pattern of setting a perimeter around me and Graham and barking her head off at anyone who came inside of it. Then she started to chase them without the barking. But soon, she found herself letting doggies through. And then she was running with some of them in herd play. And letting them sniff her. And doing all of the wonderful things that well socialized dogs should do. I think Celosa has made a world of difference in Crianza's interaction with other people and dogs.

Celosa, of course, has never met a stranger. She found four or five doggies and people who were her instant very best friends in the whole wide world. One of them--a grey fluffy thing a little smaller than her of indeterminate parentage--played with her for a good half-hour straight. At one point Crianza joined in their game (which was called "chase me as fast as you can"). She also shuffled into the pond a few times, ensuring that her fur would get (more) matted and every grain of sand and dirt she encountered would stick to her. We'd find her running all the way on the other side of the park, but she's pretty good about coming when she's called, so we never really worried much about her. At one point, we found her sitting on some person's (I think the pug owner) lap, telling her how much she loved her.

The dog park seemed to be full of puppies that day. Andre, a three month old white French bulldog was probably the most adorable. He was as friendly as Celosa, but didn't have much coordination. At one point he launched himself on my lap, demanding love. And then he did the same to Graham. And then to everyone else sitting on the embankment at the side of the park. The eight week old dauchsunds, of course, were terribly cute. As was a ten month old miniature pug, and an eight week old mixed breed doggie named Lobo.

The dog park we go to (on Westpark at the loop) is divided into big dog and little dog, and at the end of our adventure, we went over to the big dog side to see what was going on there and get a bit of a final walk in. The pond area seemed to be the most popular, but general tennis ball throwing came in a close second. Crianza didn't like being over there at all, and even Celosa was a little less outgoing than she usually is. Graham and I were glad that we can go to the little dog side, because we don't have to worry at all about our dogs (27 and 20ish pounds) getting hurt by someone getting a little too rough.

The doggies were tired when we got to PetCo to pick up some food and treats, and they were even more tired after I gave them baths. Celosa took 45 minutes, in part because she was so dirty, and in part because she's starting to cord hardcore. I'm trying to keep the matting under some semblance of control, but she's just wild hair right now. I can feel clumps of her fur, and it's easier to separate the cords when it's wet than when it's dry. Crianza's cords are so much easier to take care of. I intellectually know that I've been through this before, twice!, and both times I came through on the other side with beautifully corded pulik, but I'm looking forward to the puppy fur giving way to the easier adult fur.

On Sunday, the pooches were perfectly happy to stay in bed when Graham and I left them at ten thirty to go to church.

No, there has been no conversion. There's been no major mistake or typo. We were invited to our friend Johnathan's (born August 24th) baptism, and we had to make it to the 10:45 service at First Presbyrterian. Graham and I were bestowed a great honor at the ceremony; no, we weren't asked to be godparents. More importantly, we were asked to be the escorts of Johnathan's two year old brother Matthew, should chaos ensue during the ceremony. We had to sit through three childrens' choirs, a sermon on "Jesus as teacher" and a few other assorted prayers and rites before they got to the baptisms. Five kids were brought into the Christian faith, and I was actually a little curious as to how this would be different than the Catholic ceremonies I was more used to.

First of all, I don't ever recall going through a community mass (are they masses?) for baptism. I can only remember my sister Olivia's and my coustin Job's, but my mother confirmed that all four of us were done in private ceremonies with just the family and godparents around. We were all baptized in Pt. Arthur by the priest that gave my dad Spanish lessons when he was a kid. The other Catholics in attendance sort of confrimed my mom's recollection of events. Secondly, there were no godparents. Both parents and any other children were up on the alter with the baptism-ee, but there wasn't anyone else there to take up the slack if something should happen to the parents. I have a special bond with one of my dad's cousins, and all of my siblings have a similar bond with their godparents. Sort of strange that isn't part of this particular ceremony. Third, the parents picked out Bible verses for their kids, and read them aloud. I wasn't paying enough attention to remember which ones were chosen, but for Catholics, the priest runs the show, aside from asking a few questions of the parents. I joked that I'd probably be kicked out of the whole process by picking something from the Song of Solomon for my kid.

At any rate, lightning didn't strike, and all in all it was a fairly painless hour, and then we got to go to brunch at the Four Seasons. Matthew sat next to Graham, and they each approved of the other's love of bacon. Brunch was buffet style, so there were a few times when Graham and Matthew went out to see the sights in the main dining areas. They went off, they said, to go find girls. And someone called "Daddy." And cheerios and bread pudding. I ran into Johnathan in the bathroom getting a diaper change, and when he was done, I swept him out of his mama's arms. He's a good natured little one, and he seemed to handle being the center of attention rather well. Graham gave him some life lessons about "safety third" and how to hang lights and all the cool things he'll see at the ranch in a few weeks. Vivian, their four year old sister, sat at the other table, so we didn't get to hang out with her as much. She did tell Graham, though, that she missed him when I went over to dinner at her house a few weeks ago without him.

We don't have that many friends in town with small kids, so it's always fun to see these little ones. They seem to like both me and Graham quite a bit, and their parents have a nice, laid back parenting style that we would want to emulate with our own kids one day.

I think that day is probably going to be sooner rather than later.


*Interesting note: When texting directions to my sister only the words "next to where the Pink Pussycat used to be" were necessary. The Pink Pussycat was a strip club that used to advertise "27 beautiful girls and 1 ugly one". There used to be a one-armed stripper there, but I've heard that she's gone on to greener pastures. It's changed names to "the Diamond Club," but as far as I can tell, it's still a strip club.

Tags: babies, celosa, crianza, weekend update

Yay! A new one!



The original.

As a side note, isn't it amazing how much YouTube video quality has changed in a year and a half?

Tags: things that make 'stina happy

Finally, I have breathing room.

My blown up computer issues took much longer to resolve than I thought they would, and I'd ended up staying way late most of this week to clean up the mess.

I think I'm pretty much back to normal now, so I can take a breath.

Oh, there are so many things going on that require comment. The Planned Parenthood director in Bryan who turned coat and supposedly will be on O'Reilly tonight (though the shooting in Ft. Hood may preempt her) was something I wanted to comment on at length, but I sort of lost my steam. Suffice it to say, I find her claims to be troubling at best and downright lies at worst. I've been involved in her chapter of Planned Parenthood for years, and I don't know a more dedicated group of people.

And the shooting. It's hard to assess at this point what goes on in the head of someone who takes the lives of many in that way. I was horrified at the sheer number of dead and wounded, and it's hard to speculate what happened. What I found interesting, though, is that speculation immediately happened. The right wing blamed the Muslims; the left wing blamed the right wing gun nuts. And I suspect that it's much more complicated than any simple explanation of politics or religion.

I will admit that I am somewhat shocked that it was a physician, as I stupidly and naively sort of assumed that people with lots of education don't do this sort of thing. Rednecks and students and low level postal workers and people with no intellectual grasp of the world take these sorts of measures, I opined from my ivory tower, not someone who went through four years of college, four years of medical school and three years of psychiatry residency. We high falutin' professionals are smarter than that. Shows me.

I told Graham, the former marine, last night that he'll be beseiged by people on both the right and left (including me) who don't know much about the military making all sorts of stupid pronouncements about what happened. I muttered something about how, contrary to the right wing talking points, having an armed populace doesn't seem to stop this sort of thing, and he pointed out that pretty much no one on base is carrying a weapon. MPs are the only ones, and maybe people doing specific training in a designated area, but generally no one is walking around armed. He was actually pretty interested to hear how the guy got his hands on weapons to do this, since they're pretty tightly contained when not in use. And of course, he'll hear all sorts of stuff about how the military shouldn't trust people of Arab descent or Muslims, ignoring the thousands of Muslims that have helped the various ongoing war efforts.

I've never been to Ft. Hood, but I've driven past it a few times. It's a massive complex, and half the Army has been through there at some point or another. I suspect there will be calls for someone's head, here, and I can't really object, if the calls are appropriately directed at the man who did this instead of classes of people who look like him or have names like his. I sort of am glad that he's alive, and maybe he can give some answers as to why he did this terrible thing. Usually after an incident like this one, the perpetrator is also killed, and the whys are left to very simple sounding speculation.

There's an irony, I suppose, that a psychiatrist should be the one to snap. I will guess, too, that there were all sorts of signs that this might happen, but no one saw them or thought much of them. Lots of soldiers, I would guess, don't want to go to warzones, especially if they'd only seen the guys who came back broken.

The flags at my work were at half-mast today, and I am still a little stunned at the vast number of people who were killed and injured. Such a waste. Such a goddamned waste.

My computer blew up on me.

Last week, I went to a conference in Austin. Our work generally pushes through computer updates on Thursday, so Wednesday night, as instructed, I simply restarted my computer instead of turning it off. On Saturday, there was a power outage, and on Monday, my computer refused to speak to me. While most of my stuff was on the network and relatively safe, there are a few things that I wish I had backed up.

So after being out of the office for two days, missing two days of computer time, this is the first chance I've had to update a little.

There's actually not much to update. My friend Candyman is getting ready for his big Halloween Party, and I suspect that Graham and I may help out with that over the next few days. I have all of the elements of my costume, but I need some time to put them together. Our friend Keissimo was in town last week for an art show, and he decided to stay over for Candyman's party. He stayed with us for a few days before moving over to Candyman's to help out. I suspect the pictures this year will be pretty good... I still have to post mine from last year.

I went to my friend Clare's for dinner on Sunday. Her children are four years, two years, and nine weeks old. She'd invited me and Graham over about two months ago, and it took us forever to coordinate work schedules and sick kids. Her oldest kid, Vivian is ridiculously precocious, and she was profoundly disappointed that Graham couldn't make it (he was with Kevin). She and Graham bonded at Matthew's 2nd birthday party two months ago. My kid exposure is pretty minimal these days, and it was cool to hang out with a chaotic, big family with such great kids. I'm thinking that sooner, rather than later the kid thing will be in my own future.

Other than that, nothing really exciting is going on. The weather around here seems to be crazy. We've had 10 inches of rain in October, and are likely due for two or three more before the month is over. It's almost making up for the total lack of rain in the summer. We alternate from turning the air conditioning on to digging through the sweater drawers.

What's going on with ya'll?

Tags: 'stina

A few weeks ago, I found myself in the awkward position of agreeing with Bill Frist in a discussion with Bill Maher about vaccination.

Earlier today, I read a really sad account of a child who cannot go to daycare because one of the other parents at his daycare will not vaccinate their child. The author's child is immunosupressed because he has cancer.

So while this nonvaccinated cancer-free child (and I'm sure she is a lovely child!) enjoys a normal white blood count of anywhere between 5,000 to 10,000 on any given day, my son is lucky if his ever breaks 2,000. An ordinary virus or some other seemingly trivial illness can cause his white count to plummet to zero—"the big egg," as one of his oncologists describes it. A fever over 101 degrees earns him a couple of nights in the hospital. On top of all that, his chemotherapy—a bewildering array of pills, IV treatments, and spinal injections—prevents his own vaccinations from working, so he cannot be vaccinated at all in treatment. My son, like other children in treatment for cancers and HIV, is "medically exempt" from being vaccinated while in treatment. In fact, most children with cancer will have to be completely revaccinated when they finish their chemotherapy, because the treatment often wipes out any immunity they may have achieved from their pre-cancer vaccines.

According to Paul Offit, the chief of the infectious diseases division at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and author of Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure, the danger that nonvaccinated children pose to immunocompromised children couldn't be clearer. Those who cannot be vaccinated, including young babies, transplant, and cancer patients, depend on the immunity of the herd to protect them. In recent years, in communities where many parents opt out of vaccinating their children, the herd has diminished. As a result, unvaccinated children have died from totally preventable infectious diseases such as measles, meningitis, and pertussis.

In 2008 in San Diego, a 7-year-old boy whose parents refused vaccines contracted measles while on a family trip to Switzerland. Before realizing how sick he was, the boy went to school and infected four other kids at school, after having already infected his two siblings. He then infected four other children who happened to be in the waiting room at his pediatrician's office. Three of those children were too young to have received their MMR vaccines. One of those infants was hospitalized; another traveled on an airplane while infectious. This case is a sobering example of how one family's decision not to vaccinate their children has serious consequences for other children.

But it isn't as sobering as the case in January in Minnesota in which an Hib meningitis outbreak severely sickened four children and killed one infant. Of those five children, one was too young to be vaccinated, one had an immune deficiency, and the other three had parents who refused the vaccine. The child who died was among those three children whose parents, out of fear or personal belief, opted out of the vaccine.

A study released this year in the journal Pediatrics demonstrated that children whose parents refused the pertussis vaccination were at a much higher risk of contracting the disease in spite of being surrounded by vaccinated children. In the case of pertussis, also called whooping cough, herd immunity does not even seem to protect the nonvaccinated, which means vaccination is the only option for protection against pertussis. Pertussis can be fatal to infants and the immunocompromised if it is not diagnosed in time to complete antibiotic therapy. My son's own pediatric oncologist noted the danger pertussis could pose to him as the No. 1 reason to seek a fully vaccinated daycare.

And then I read this post at Lawyers, Guns and Money, which led me to this Wired article, on the anti-vaccine fear.

Consider: In certain parts of the US, vaccination rates have dropped so low that occurrences of some children’s diseases are approaching pre-vaccine levels for the first time ever. And the number of people who choose not to vaccinate their children (so-called philosophical exemptions are available in about 20 states, including Pennsylvania, Texas, and much of the West) continues to rise. In states where such opting out is allowed, 2.6 percent of parents did so last year, up from 1 percent in 1991, according to the CDC. In some communities, like California’s affluent Marin County, just north of San Francisco, non-vaccination rates are approaching 6 percent (counterintuitively, higher rates of non-vaccination often correspond with higher levels of education and wealth).

That may not sound like much, but a recent study by the Los Angeles Times indicates that the impact can be devastating. The Times found that even though only about 2 percent of California’s kindergartners are unvaccinated (10,000 kids, or about twice the number as in 1997), they tend to be clustered, disproportionately increasing the risk of an outbreak of such largely eradicated diseases as measles, mumps, and pertussis (whooping cough). The clustering means almost 10 percent of elementary schools statewide may already be at risk.

In May, The New England Journal of Medicine laid the blame for clusters of disease outbreaks throughout the US squarely at the feet of declining vaccination rates, while nonprofit health care provider Kaiser Permanente reported that unvaccinated children were 23 times more likely to get pertussis, a highly contagious bacterial disease that causes violent coughing and is potentially lethal to infants. In the June issue of the journal Pediatrics, Jason Glanz, an epidemiologist at Kaiser’s Institute for Health Research, revealed that the number of reported pertussis cases jumped from 1,000 in 1976 to 26,000 in 2004. A disease that vaccines made rare, in other words, is making a comeback. “This study helps dispel one of the commonly held beliefs among vaccine-refusing parents: that their children are not at risk for vaccine-preventable diseases,” Glanz says.

“I used to say that the tide would turn when children started to die. Well, children have started to die,” Offit says, frowning as he ticks off recent fatal cases of meningitis in unvaccinated children in Pennsylvania and Minnesota. “So now I’ve changed it to ‘when enough children start to die.’ Because obviously, we’re not there yet.”

This is just insane. Vaccines save lives. Maybe parents are too young to remember small pox, but they should ask their own parents about the scars on their arms. Polio shouldn't be around anymore. Measles shouldn't be a disease we have to worry about. Whooping cough is making a dramatic comeback? Why? Why on earth is this allowed to happen. It's absolutely insane.

A report by the WHO, UNICEF, and World Bank called State of the world’s vaccines and immunization was released today. It is dedicated to "to all those individuals who work tirelessly to improve and save lives through vaccines and immunization." And it begins with this quote:“With the exception of safe water, no other modality, not even antibiotics, has had such a major effect on mortality reduction…” The report details the efforts worldwide to vaccinate children and the effects vaccination has in saving lives and ensuring quality of life. It baffles me that so many efforts are made in third world countries to ensure that vaccinations happen, that people in countries with no healthcare fight tooth and nail to get these important immune boosters, and wealthy Americans dismiss them with no basis of scientific fact at all. Read the whole Wired article, excerpted above, people are fighting vaccines as they do for religion. It's downright strange, and wrong.

I'm, coincidently, getting my 'flu shot tonight. It's not an essential vaccine to get every year, but I work in an area where lots of sick people congregate, and I think it's a good idea for me.

Tags: healthcare, science

I walked into the gym this morning, and my mother says "did you find the pumpkin we left?"

"That was you? We thought we'd been tagged and cursed. Where the hell did you get it?"

"It was a door prize at a Peter Brown fundraiser last night. We won it!"

"Graham said it was creepy and weird."

"He is covered in skull tattoos!"

"That thing is never going to rot. It will sit there forever."

"Yeah, they said it's some sort of putty."

"It looks like pumpkin plastic surgery."

"Yeah, we thought you'd get a kick out of it."

Tags: mama, surreal

We've been tagged.

Graham and I walked home from geek night. We'd watched the first three episodes of the second season of Babylon 5 with a good hunk of our friends. The front porch lights had been unplugged by a repairman on Saturday who'd fixed our front door, and while Graham went to let the dogs out, I went to turn on the lights.

When I turned back towards the door, I found this mysterious and frankly creepy item sitting on the front porch table.

"Graham...."

"Hold on a second."

"Can you come out here when you all have come back in?"

"Sure...Celosa calm down...Just a second. Celosa, I said quiet."

He came outside.

"What the hell is that?"

"I have no idea. I was hoping you got it."

He picked it up and examined it.

"It looks like it's had plastic surgery," I said helpfully.

"This thing is weird and creepy."

"I wonder who left it for us."

"Dunno. I hope it was one of our friends. I think."

"Maybe it's like like Harry Potter, and our house has been tagged by the dark mark."

We were the first ones to get to our friends' house about three blocks away earlier in the evening. Five more friends arrived after us, any of them could have stopped by our house before going over to our friends' to mark us. Or it could have been other friends. Or complete strangers.

At any rate, it is weird and creepy. And as Graham pointed out, it's unlikely to go bad for quite some time...

Yes, my friends, we've been pumpkined.

Tags: pictures, surreal

Huh, Flaming Lips to remake Dark Side of the Moon.

An album that was recorded during a turbulent time about a turbulent time will be remade. . . . The Flaming Lips are planning a track-by-track replica of DSTM. Pink Floyd’s release came in 1973, with the single “Money.”
. . .

Last night, not knowing about this remake, I just happened to watch a documentary called, “The Making of the Dark Side of the Moon”. Fantastic. I viewed it as streaming video from Netflix through my TV. I mention this because in the documentary, Pink Floyd’s Gilmour and Rogers describe the antiquated technology they used to make DSTM, and how it inspired their creativity. They said some of the things you heard on DSTM, you’d never hear today. Technology makes some things too easy.

I’ll be interesting to see how the Flaming Lips try to replicate the original. By the way, they’re planning to make their version an iTunes-only release.

Watch the Lips perform “Eclipse” from Dark Side of the Moon by clicking here. It’s an in-studio session at one of the public radio stations here in LA, KCRW. And below, you can see Lips lead singer Wayne Coyne announcing the project, which will also include help from Stardeath, White Dwarfs, Peaches and Henry Rollins.

But no, I don’t know if the Flaming Lips version will synch up to The Wizard of Oz or not.

Cool. I did the Wizard of Oz synch thing once in college. It worked ridiculously well. I don't remember what, if anything, I was on at the time.

I love the Flaming Lips. I'm looking forward to this.

Tags: music