Happy Foolery Day!

But I swear, there are no April Fool's jokes embedded in this entry!

Once again, it’s been a long time since updates… sorry about that.

But let’s get going… here are some random thoughts and general updates, in no particular order:

It’s amazing how much money one can save by brown-bagging it for lunch. Most of the cash that was in my wallet on Monday is still in my wallet today (and I have tomorrow off…). Of course, one trip to Borders or Barnes and Noble and whoosh! Time for another trip to the ATM.

New job is coming along nicely. I like getting a nice stretch of the legs to and from the L, and I like having some time to read coming and going. Good to have a gig accessible by transit.

I can’t tell if the kitties actually like each other or not. They seem to fight a lot, and Mifune growls at Mingus when he pokes around her. But he does bother her a lot. They may have taken his cojones when he was 3 months old, but he’s still a tomcat who appreciates a lovely lady kitteh when he sees one. And he’s almost as big as she is now.

Good grief, but is it a gorgeous day! Although true to Chicago form, we are being warned to expect cooler than seasonal temps by Sunday. Figures.

Guest room/office is painted and new (well, newly assembled!) bookcases are in place. It still is a receptacle for boxes of stuff that we hauled out of there in the first place (not as much, though, as we made a big donation run to the Salvo). We have yet to purchase a new futon and frame, and I’m looking for just the right sized filing cabinet for the room, and then we’ll be closer to finished with it. The new color looks nice. I still haven’t uploaded pictures, but I will soon. You’ll just have to trust me on this.

I’m a bit worried about Mom. She seems to be having a bit of a bad reaction to some antidepressant medicine her doctor prescribed a month or so ago. She’s become rather anxiety-prone and occasionally fearful to leave her house, and that’s not like her at all. Brother John and I are trying to alert her doctor to the problem, but he seems rather sanguine about it. We think it is time she consulted a gerontologist. After all, she is nearly 92. Send some good thoughts her way!

Finally got the tax info and receipts to the accountant. Hope there is a refund coming!

There seems to be a singular dearth of Cadbury Crème Eggs this year. What is up with that? Easy-peasy to find the Cadbury Caramel Eggs, but not the luscious Crème Eggs I so crave each Easter. I have found, purchased, and consumed one package—and that was at the local Aldi.

Speaking of Aldi, I finally shopped in one after all the years I’ve been living in Chicago. For those not in the know, Aldi is a discount supermarket that has knock-off brands for really cheap prices. They opened one up beside our local Pet Smart, so the last time I went to buy Mingus’s kitten food, I dropped into Aldi as well. I’d been waiting to check the store out, as Jeff told me that decades ago he found a whole chicken in a can—bones and all—at Aldi. Well, I saw no canned whole chickens there, but I DID find some gorgonzola crackers—a big box for $1.69—that were surprisingly tasty as well as the aforementioned 4-pack of Cadbury Crème Eggs. And a box of raisins that was also dirt cheap. And fine, except for the raisins are very sticky. Don’t think I’ll make shopping there a regular thing, though.

Oh! And I have a new uke! A concert uke made by Kala. It has a cedar top and Koa sides and back. Sounds lovely! Pictures to come.

Freakin' Squirrels...

Yesterday morning before we headed out the door for work, Jeff and I noticed that Mifune and Mingus were glued to the windows that look out on the balcony. We peered out ourselves, only to see a fat squirrel luxuriating in one of the flower boxes, trying to nosh on the plastic berries of the fake greenery we put out as Christmas/winter decorations every year. I didn't want the squirrel to try to eat the plastic and choke or die from toxins or whatever, so I rattled the casement to scare the critter off. This did not set well with the kittehs (they were highly indignant), and it didn't faze the squirrel (who was cooly indifferent), but at least I tried.

Fast forward to this morning, when I opened the front drapes so that Mifune could take advantage of her current favorite lookout spot on the arm of our sofa. There, between the window and the cement balustrade (one of the many that bedeck the windows on our building's facade), lay one of the bunches of fake greenery from the balcony boxes. Alongside it lay a scrap of wire and a couple of small lightbulbs--a portion of the string of icicle lights that made up some of the Christmas decor. (And before I get admonished for keeping the Christmas lights up too long, we haven't turned them on since Epiphany, and it's been too cold to go out there and extricate them from the fake greenery, so there.) Great. So our squirrel friend has destroyed the string of lights and dragged some of the greenery around the entire exterior of the sunroom to the northernmost front window.

Fast forward about ten minutes later, when Jeff and I are leaving the building to scrape the dusting of snow and ice off the car and proceed to work. Beside one of the urns that flank the front steps lay another longer length of masticated icicle lights. We looked up at the balcony boxes, and at least two of the sprigs of faux evergreenery have disappeared from the boxes.

Oh well. I figured this might be the last year for those icicle lights anyway... they were getting long in the tooth. But shoot! I can't imagine the squirrels are so hungry that they are trying to eat fake foliage and electrical wire! Especially when you consider how relatively mild a winter it's been here in Chicago and how zaftig the little rodents are at this point in the year.

Guess I'd better add "take in Christmas decorations" to my list of weekend tasks... Sigh.

How Did I Sleep through an Earthquake?

Apparently, this morning at around 4:00 a.m. the earth moved beneath northern Illinois. A temblor of around 3.8 struck in a farm field near Elgin, at a depth of 3 miles or so. Although there is known fault system called the Sandwich Fault Zone near the epicenter, the USGS is saying this event occurred on a "hidden fault." It was felt over a wide area--apparently reports of shaking came in from as far south as Tennessee. People in Iowa and Wisconsin felt it too. And of course there were reports of it from Chicago, but Jeff and I slept through the whole thing. I wonder if that's because our building is built on sand, which doesn't transmit the seismic waves as well as bedrock does. Hmm. (Edited to add--that is, sand and fill doesn't transmit distant waves as well... if the epicenter is close enough and the shaking severe enough, sand and fill will fall prey to liquifaction--a very bad situation indeed!)

I, however, am taking this as proof-positive that my panic reaction to earthquakes has finally dissipated. Let me explain.

The first earthquake I ever felt was in Syracuse, in central New York state. It struck around six a.m. or so one weekday morning, waking me up in wonderment. What the heck? Is this an earthquake? It wasn't until I turned on the bedside radio for confirmation and heard that yes, indeed! It was a 5.2 or so, centered somewhere closer to the Adirondacks, that I became a tad frightened. Within a few minutes, though, I was over it. Throughout the day, everyone was talking about it and how weird it felt--a kind of rocking sensation, gentle but unnerving.

Fast forward a few years, to when I took up residence in a very seismically active place: San Francisco, CA. A few months before I moved there, the Bay Area had experienced 6.2 temblor that did some considerable damage in Morgan Hill, near the epicenter. Within two months of moving to San Francisco, I felt my first west coast earthquake... although it wasn't all that strong. It was a lot like the one I felt in Syracuse, to be honest. Kind of fun to ride out, once you realize the shaking is not going to intensify. For a while, we were getting earthquakes in the high 4s and low 5s every six months or so. Nothing we couldn't handle. Nothing we couldn't joke about the next day.

And then came Loma Prieta.

That one started much the same as the others: the building began to shake a bit, back and forth, the timbers began to whine and squeak... I made my way to my usual spot, which was the bathroom door frame, near the core of the building. We didn't really have a sturdy table to dive under, and our very sturdy desk was in the window bay--too close to glass for comfort. I figured I'd stand there in the doorway, a hand on each jamb, and ride it out as usual. But this time it didn't peter out. This time it DID intensify. And how! And it didn't just shake. It rolled. The building twisted. At the height of the shaking, the entertainment center came into view... it was located on a wall parallel to the wall in which the doorway where I stood was located. Impossible, I thought. But I saw it. And the TV ended up in the middle of the living room floor, so...

From that day forth (until this morning?), I have never been cavalier about earthquakes again. Even the small ones--the 3.8s and such--sent me into near panic. One thing a big earthquake can do is undermine your belief in the phrase "solid ground." Nuh-uh. Ain't no such thing. And even after I moved to a place where the ground is fairly solid--more solid than the ground of California, at least--my panic response held. Once, a few years after I became a Chicagoan, we took the kids to the Museum of Science and Industry where we watched an IMAX film on earthquakes. Loma Prieta was featured, and the security camera clips of things shaking and falling and breaking triggered an anxiety attack of rather massive proportions--something I really thought I was past. It was all I could do to stay in my seat and be quiet while tears streamed down my face.

And so, I'm amazed that I didn't feel this particular earthquake. Maybe I am over this 20+ year old psychological trauma. That would be nice.

Although I must say, it explains why the cats were so darned weird this morning. I mean, weirder than usual.

A coda: Many of the accounts I've read online of people who experienced this morning's little shaker mention the sound of it. Some reports describe a low, deep rumbling. Others mention a sonic boom or loud explosive sound right before the shaking began. I have to say, though, that in all the earthquakes I've experienced, weak or strong, I have never heard anything like that. The only sounds I've ever heard are the floor joists screaming and stuff falling and glass breaking. Although it makes sense that rock grinding against rock would make some kind of sound...