Hacked! A Tale of Woe

Just having a birthday at the end of January is crappy enough, but this year's birthday took the All-Time Super Grand Prize for Suckiness. For once, that honor didn't have anything to do with the terrible stinkin' winter weather or the fact that many restaurants close on Mondays during the off season. The most productive thing I did all day (outside of work) was to reorganize the home office desks (found stuff I'd been missing for months!). I didn't even bother buying my own birthday gift. All that pales next to the sheer aggravation that took place online that day.

This year's birthday began with some puzzling notifications in my email box. The first emails came from Yahoo, with timestamps of around 6:30 AM. "Hey, we noticed that you just changed your password. Did you mean to do that?" I hadn't changed my password -- I was still asleep at 6:30, and only just got up at 7.

I tried to log in to Yahoo, and received a "wrong password" response. I changed my email password, logged in, and found that all of the messages had been deleted from my inbox and folders. Next stop was Yahoo's help, where I contacted Yahoo, explained that I had probably been hacked, and specified when I last saw my inbox intact. Yahoo sent a canned email response, but also quickly restored everything to the state it had been when I saw it on the previous night.

The same thing had happened with my Gmail account. Someone had hacked into it, changed the password, and deleted all of the emails and folders. As it turns out, Google does not restore deleted messages from backup. Everything I had in that account -- including all of the stuff I'd been working on for Shaggy Dog Stories promotions -- was gone forever. At least the account was mine again when I changed the password.

Next, I received notification that my Facebook account had been disabled. I tried logging into that, and failed. My password had been changed there, too.

Then the calls and emails started coming. "Are you OK? Where are you?" Confused, I answered "I'm at home. Why?" Some of my friends forwarded this to me...

I'm writing this with tears in my eyes, I came down here to Wales Uk for a short vacation unfortunately i was mugged at the park of the hotel where we stayed,all cash,credit card and cell was stolen from me but luckily i still have my life and passport.i've been to the embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all and my flight leaves today but am having problems settling the hotel bills, and the hotel manager won't let me leave until we settle the bills,i'm freaked out at the moment.wondering if you could help me  with a quick loan,i can pay you back once i get home.

Thanks

Apparently this email had gone out to everyone I ever met -- the sister and stepmother of my high-school boyfriend, whom I hadn't seen or spoken to since approximately 1981, my favorite headhunter, a couple of former bosses, several Yahoo email lists, Greg, a high-school classmate on a business trip to Dallas... well, pretty much everybody. Many people realized that I have dear friends in Wales, so they believed the story -- at least for a moment. One person, with whom I had exchanged a couple of casual emails once when she was looking for a puppy, sent me back a "How dare you?" email. Apparently she thought I had some nerve to be emailing her for money. I had to explain that I'd been hacked -- had to explain it over and over and over again. I even had to set that as my status on LinkedIn, since I couldn't get into Facebook.

The more astute among my friends and acquaintances -- including many fellow writers and most of my former editors -- figured that something was afoot, since I hadn't lost my ability to use punctuation overnight. (Even my text messages use proper spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.) The originating email address was my3seadog@yahoo (a new account that looked like my Yahoo email, only with letters omitted). Same with saltyshepdog@gmail.

My friend and former co-worker Joel, who had also been pinged through Facebook chat by someone pretending to be me, pretended to play along. Here's what he sent back to the impostor:

Karen, I just checked email and saw your horrible message. Did you get the help you needed? If not, please give me a call at ###-###-#### and we'll work something out.

"Bizarro Me" wasted no time in getting back to the fish s/he had apparently hooked:

Glad to hear back from you.i wish i could call you but i don't have access to phone or any place i can get phone to receive call. It has really been embarrassing for me $1,850 USD. will cover all my expenses but i will appreciate whatsoever you can afford to wire right now, I promise to refund it to you as soon as I arrive home. You can wire it to my name from a western union outlet around. Here are the details you need to get it to me

Address:-2 Park Street Cardiff South Wales United Kingdom CF101ET

I still have my passport so I can use it as identification once you are done,  kindly e-mail me the western union confirmation Number MTCN ..let me know if you are heading to the western union now?

(2 Park Street in Cardiff appears to be the address of the local courthouse, according to Google Maps.)

Joel and I both called Western Union to report the situation. Western Union's security people informed us that these crooks were well-known in the UK, and although they were outside the reach of the USA, they were known to law enforcement across the pond. Also, a recipient of wired funds could show up with a fake ID anywhere to a Western Union office anywhere in the country to claim the money -- so a bogus address really didn't matter. The tracking number simply allows people to see when the funds are available to be picked up. Apparently criminals love Western Union wire transfers because they're so trusting. The security folks put a stop on any transactions involving my name, but there were no guarantees that the local constabulary could immediately show up and arrest someone who could be anywhere in the country, and who wouldn't appear unless real money had been wired. Joel asked whether the criminals would accept PayPal -- but no. PayPal is too secure.

Meanwhile, "Bizarro Me" insisted that "my" cell phone had been taken, but the laptop had not -- hence the ability to send emails and Facebook messages, but nothing that could positively identify "me." Apparently there were no other phones anywhere in Wales, and "I" was mighty insistent about an inability to call. (Apparently Skype was also a no-go.)

In the meantime, Facebook could not have been less helpful. All support emails are automated; I didn't exchange messages with a single human being. No one answers the phones, even the ones listed at gethuman.com. They don't even take voicemail messages. All I received were multiple copies of the same "Your account has been disabled because you were scamming Facebook" email.

Joel reported that "Bizarro Me" was positively salivating at the chance to reap some reward, and kept emailing him every few minutes asking where the money was. Joel replied that his wife was out at the bank getting money, and he would send it as soon as she got home. Eventually, he tired of the emails and told the crook that instead of getting the money for me, she had wired it to a friend of hers who had also been "stranded in Wales." "Bizarro Me" began to squeak for "any money at all," but Joel cut "me" off. Apparently "Bizarro Me" has no sense of irony.

It took me over three weeks of wading through canned responses to get my Facebook account restored. Even after watching "The Social Network" and reading that the company is buying the old "Sun Quentin" campus in Menlo Park, I'm astonished to see that any human beings work there at all. Until the day my account was finally restored, I had never actually made contact with any.

To this day, I'm not entirely sure how the hackers made their attack, but my theory is that they invaded Facebook first. Facebook gets hacked all the time -- presumably by bored sixth-graders -- but the company robots have no conception of network security. Once inside, the hackers were able to send chat messages to all 1400-plus of my Facebook friends and gain access to the email addresses I had configured in my profile. From there, they were able to access the online address books for those emails, and send the infamous "tears in my eyes" email to everyone on the planet before deleting all of the email messages in my inbox.

I've been online since about 1986 or 87 (not counting a CompuServe account I'd had a year or so before that) and had never been hacked, never had a virus, never succumbed to a phishing scheme... nothing. Most of my computers have been Macs. This doesn't insulate you completely from the world of bad intentions, but most hackers are still too lazy to write viruses for Mac OS. I used to enjoy getting PC viruses in my email inbox on the UNIX boxes at work; this allowed me to read the scripts in the virus files and marvel at the sheer chutzpah of people who really should take up better hobbies. (I hear stamp collecting is very popular, as is model railroading.)

Here are some things I've learned from the experience. I hope you never need to find them helpful.

• Change your passwords. If you don't want to do it even once a year, at least make them hard to guess. Adding numbers no longer makes things more complicated; you'll want to throw in some punctuation and/or symbols, too. If you'll have trouble remembering them, write them down on paper and keep the paper in a secure place, or use a utility like 1Password. Make up special passwords for your bank account and credit card accounts, and don't use those with anything else, even other bank accounts. Most Facebook hackers just want quick/insecure money, but don't be bait for the real identity thieves, either.
• Don't use an online email account (such as Yahoo, Gmail, or Hotmail) with social networking sites. There are hackers who "specialize" in hacking those accounts. Use the email address that comes with your broadband Internet (cable or DSL), or get an email account from an honest-to-goodness ISP.
• If you value the information in your online email accounts, then save it offline. Yahoo will bail you out if something goes wrong. Google figures that you're on your own.
• Don't use online address books, except secured ones like MobileMe. Use the ones stored on your computer instead. It takes 2 more seconds per email, but you won't have to spend days cleaning up after an attack.
• Facebook and other social networking sites are all about interconnection. Make only the connections you will actually find useful. Don't click on links to videos or other messages that appear in your feed; go to YouTube (or whatever) and search for the video if you want to see it. Remember: the more capital letters, OMGs, exclamation points, or .info domains you see, the more likely the link is to be bogus -- if not evil.
• Delete games, polls, etc. that you're no longer using.You never know who will come across a dead poll with loads of contacts in it, and decide to make use of it.
• Ignore invites for games you don't want to play or friend requests from people whom you don't know, or who are perfect strangers who have no photos and no other friends.

I hope this lengthy tale of woe prevents the same thing from happening to you. My sin was laziness. It won't happen again.

By the way, if you are ever robbed while traveling and need help, the staff at a decent hotel will never hold you hostage -- and they will let you use the hotel phone to call for help.

Soggy Doggy Fun

Yesterday, Greg and I loaded Charlie and Dinah into the Subaru and drove to Belfast for their annual Celtic Festival. Our friends Bill and Cathy live there with their Beardie and Bouvier, and I had never seen the new place -- plus the Festival offered a showcase for Celtic dog breeds. Why not?

We encountered typical weather for this summer -- gray, alternating between rain and mere drizzle -- and ended up looking mighty bedraggled by the time we made it to the exhibition tent to give our little spiel. Charlie had a fine old time flirting with the Lassies...



When it came time for the Beardies to give their spiel, we stepped up on stage and delivered the usual stuff. I was particularly tickled that people asked questions about the AKC Canine Good Citizen program when I mentioned that Dinah was my demo dog. Of course, we fielded the usual questions about how much they shed, how much they eat, and so on. (My sister has threatened for years to make me a T-shirt with all of the standard answers to the standard questions. "Yes, we know they don't look like Lassie...")

After we finished our portion of the program, we browsed the other vendors and picked up some absolutely wonderful pulled-pork sandwiches from the BBQ vendor (whose stand kept wafting glorious scents in our direction as we waited our turn in the Celtic dog breeds demo). Greg tried the cornbread and pronounced that wonderful. We had a delightful old time, sharing beer, BBQ, and Beardies and Bouviers with a couple of my old friends. I'd never seen their Belfast house, though I'd been to visit them when they lived in Owl's Head.

After lunch, Greg and I decided to explore the rest of downtown. I LIKE Belfast. It still retains a little of its old "real Maine" funkiness along with all the boutiques and galleries. It definitely reminds me of how Portsmouth and Newburyport looked before Starbucks and The Gap came to town.

I sacrificed a week's worth of Weight Watchers points for a frozen yogurt in a homemade waffle cone (still warm!). Greg asked the nice woman at the counter about gelato. "Oh, we've run out," she said, "but we've just started making more in the back." They make their ice cream and gelato as well as the cones! I want to move into that shop.

(Oh, and I did find the yarn shop downtown. Great place -- small, but amazingly well-stocked, and with enough room for three regulars to hang out together and knit. They even stock local yarns!)

This Week in Web Stuff

I'm feeling a little bit better in general about my post-employment life as a freelancer these days. I'm still not earning squat, but I do have to keep an eye on what squat I do earn. Unemployment has an upper limit on the amount of money one can earn while still collecting.

The client whom I thought hated her site actually liked it a lot, but wanted to meet in person to trade thumb drives of photos and other stuff. She asked me to create another page and move some stuff, and she's actually delighted with it. I won't hear from her for a little while -- her "high season" started last Friday, and she's going to be out straight for a while.

With Greg's help, I also managed to get the site that wasn't working to run the way I wanted it to. Now that it's actually useful and usable, I've been making behind-the-scenes tweaks and additions to get the other stuff I promised online. This makes me happy.

I'm ready to start another site for a friend of mine, but she's been a bear and a half to track down. I've called, I've emailed, and I would send snail mail if I had her address. At least she doesn't appear to be in a rush to get the work done. I'll just move on to some site updates for another client and a mini-site for some friends-of-friends who really just want something simple.

I really love the work. I just wish I could make enough to live on -- I would walk away from technical writing forever if I could. In the meantime, I'm still seeking out and applying for the few jobs that are available, all of which are located in some other city where management really only wants people on-site, and less-expensive ones at that. One recruiter keeps sending me announcements of every job in Maine that he can find. He means well, but I don't think he's read my resume. Otherwise, he might think twice before sending me announcements of jobs for QA engineers in Augusta. The entire state of Maine is right next door, right?

Your Call Is Important To Us

This too shall pass, but today I think I've reached my volunteering limit. The problem with being at home, having a computer which you haven't broken yet, and belonging to any organization is that people constantly badger you for free, immediate technical support. I am currently ignoring two phone calls and an email demanding my immediate attention. It wouldn't even be so bad if I could just fix the damn problem and get off the phone, but I'm just not ready to invest a couple of hours in listening to someone else's life story AND trying to sort out their computer issues -- particularly when people aren't really interested in learning how to do things for themselves, so the phone will definitely be ringing again shortly thereafter. Sometimes I think that people should have to pass a test before buying a computer.

On top of which, I just plain got annoyed at a couple of emails I received this morning. One demanded that I sign up for yet another work detail for our National Specialty (to which I really wanted to reply, "I've been working on this show all year, too. Pick on someone who hasn't done dick yet."). Another email remarked that no matter what our financial circumstances, we ought to attend at least one of our desperately-overpriced banquets to show our support. The only way I will be able to get to the show in the first place to work all week and attend numerous lengthy and dead-boring meetings is to carpool with other people and minimize my expenses. Comp my effin ticket and I'll think about going. Otherwise, no. Ask someone else to volunteer for a change.

Don't Quit Yer Day Job! Oh, Wait... I Didn't.

Happy soggy Summer Solstice, all. I always have the best of intentions, but somehow the last entire month of spring just got away from me. Now it's summer -- and it's rainy, chilly, and sticky. Did we wake up in Washington State this morning by mistake?

It's been a real roller-coaster ride for me during the past month, and I've spent most of the time clinging on for dear life and screaming all the way down.

First, the good news: I finished a couple of important Web sites, and the recipients are very happy with them. Both clients were just wonderful to work with, and I like to think I've made some friends in the process. Sue deserves many thanks for introducing me to one of them, and for spreading the word about my work. The other client came from Dale, and she deserves huge thanks for that one. I have to finish work on another site as soon as I can, and I have a respectable list of clients in my queue. I haven't really had to advertise yet -- word of mouth is a powerful vehicle.

I have to admit that I'm quite happy with how both sites turned out, and it just cheers me to hear that the clients are equally tickled. One of them told me that his Web site is a huge hit at the local coffee shop -- all of the other early-rising professionals in town hang out there and talk shop, and they've all been to visit his Web site and loved it. Maybe some of that fan-love will turn into more work for me.

Next, the less-than-good news, of the type that makes me wonder whether I shouldn't just hang up my designing shoes and get another stinking office job. I'm getting used to the "Oh, my daughter/student/neighbor/etc. wants to do my Web site, so I've decided I don't need you any more" emails. More power to them, and to the daughters/students/neighbors. I'm beginning to think that maybe those folks would have been more trouble for less return anyway, but I'd be lying if I said that it didn't hurt my feelings just a little.

Then there's the one whom I can tell doesn't like the site I did, but who won't tell me what she wants, either. I would be happy to tweak anything at all, but thus far she's been mum on the subject. She didn't like her old Web site either, which is why she engaged me to redesign it. I haven't lost hope yet, but I have the feeling that it's going to take a small miracle to realize a dime from that effort. I did my level best to match the site to the existing corporate identity, which was probably designed in Microsoft Word circa 1985 -- and maybe that's where I went wrong. Maybe I should have tossed the whole thing out and created something from scratch that looked as though it belonged to this century. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Plus I'm getting discouraged about another site that I thought would "just work," but the technical issues are driving me to drink (and alcohol costs a lot of Weight Watchers points). I really, really like the clients and just want them to have their site, but everything I do seems to be blocked, or doesn't work correctly. I can't say "I'm sorry" enough -- nor can I get it working enough. I have to go curl up with some reference books for a while and see if I can figure out what I'm not doing right.

Mind you, I haven't abandoned hope for the stinkin' office job yet, either. I'm still trying to root them out and apply for them -- there just aren't many around. All the jobs seem destined for more junior people (read: cheaper), or are located on the West Coast and they want you on-site every day, or some other reason. The last time someone even acknowledged receiving my information was a month ago. No interviews yet. Even the headhunters have gone silent. One scheduled a call, then emailed to say she was sick and would reschedule... two weeks ago. I sure hope her illness isn't serious.

Sorry to be such a downer, but some days life in the Era of Diminished Expectations just gets to me.

This Too Shall Pass

Yesterday was my birthday. I like to think that I can now bid good riddance to a bad year -- or, as Queen Elizabeth said about the year 1992, "it has turned out to be an Annus Horribilis."

Just in time for the celebration, I was laid off from my job of 11+ years. I knew I was in trouble the minute my boss, who has always been friendly and chatty during our phone meetings, launched into reading a script: "As you know, Sun has been going through some changes...". In better times, I simply would have laughed, thanked her for the paid time off, and picked up a contract job to tide me over while I looked for a suitable permanent gig. However, this is early 2009, and we're still cleaning off the residue of the last 8 years of plutocratic rule. No doubt about it, I'm going to have to work hard to find another gig, and I am less than 100% confident that I'll find one very soon in these times. I do get a severance package, but it's hardly generous. Wish me luck.

In between (frequent) bouts of terror, though, I actually welcome a chance to regroup. I've had a long list of things that I hoped to do someday. Once I cross off the ones (such as "vacation in Tahiti") that would cost money, there are still plenty of things I never had time to do. I can spend more time on freelance articles! I can knit in the middle of the day -- and can even take a morning knitting class with my friend Fran! If the weather didn't suck, I could take long walks with the dogs and tire them out for a change. I can even take morning classes with them, if I can find the money. I can go to the gym -- the one I've been paying membership fees to all this time. I have time to get back into learning PHP, which I was just starting to do.

Plus, bless everybody's hearts, I now have a bunch of Web sites to do. I LOVE doing Web work, and would sit here at the computer at night, thinking, "I just LOVE this. I wish this were my day job." Well, at least for now, it is. I just wish it paid anything like my previous gig. If I could make a living at it, I'd never go back.

Greg has really been a rock since the whole thing happened. He's been coming up with plenty of ideas how we can both make money and save it. In spite of the impending austerity of our future existence, he took me out to a sumptuous dinner at 555 in Portland for my birthday. The food was exquisite and imaginatively prepared and presented, the service was attentive, and we had ourselves a grand old time. We made a reservation for Valentine's Day, and I'm hoping that times will get better soon enough that we can return on a regular basis. We haven't had a meal like that since the chef from Windows on the Water retired. I feel guilty that Greg spent that much money on a dinner while we're on the edge of some mighty hard times, but I hope that we'll have something to celebrate soon.

Thankful? We're Working On It.

Hey, I know Thanksgiving Day was a couple of days ago, and yesterday was Black Friday (signifying the color worn by the family of that poor guy at a Long Island Wally World who got trampled to death by rabid Christmas shoppers). Next Monday is Cyber Monday -- only for people who don't really understand that using "cyber" as a prefix for anything anymore just shows that one doesn't really know much about the Tubular Interwebs. "Dude, the '80s called and they, like, want their slang back."

Anyway, I suppose that this puts us right in the middle of the holiday season today, whether we like it or not. I hope it's not too late to still be thankful for a few things, however small.

• I suppose I'm thankful that the pre-treatment estimate for Charlie's upcoming surgery pretty much equals the last deposit I made to my checking account. Anyone who wants to complain about it being a fairly lean Christmas from these here parts is more than welcome to unwrap a lump of you-know-what for the holidays, and I'm not talking about coal. (Clue: You can come to our backyard and scoop your own piece from the available selection.)


• I'm thankful to still have a job, but let's revisit that particular idea in a couple of months. It was nice of my employers to let us all sweat through the holidays before letting us know whether we'll ever be able to pay off the gifts we charged to our MasterCards. Priceless.


• Okay, I am genuinely thankful that we finished Dinah's AKC championship this year, and are teetering on the brink of finishing her in Canada. Details are on my other blog. The Thanksgiving Cluster usually marks our last show appearance of the calendar year, so it was particularly nice to be able to finish our 2009 season at the last shows of our year. I'm also grateful to be able to pick and choose our shows now that she's a special, instead of sending out $30 and a whole lot of hope to every show within a few hundred miles that stands a chance of amassing a major's worth of competition. I can roll that savings right into my 401(k) and watch it disappear anyway.


• I am grateful that my family seems to be hanging in there, despite some health scares that my father's had this year. One of my sisters recently got engaged, and I'm glad for her. I just pray every day that she and her intended run off to Las Vegas and get married by an Elvis impersonator so I don't have to deal with a 50-year-old Bridezilla. See "lean year for gifts" above.

Yeah, we still have our health, the roof is still over our heads, and our guy won in the last election. This is a season of hope, however guarded that hope might be. If I have a wish for this upcoming holiday season, it's that we will shortly be able to look back in it and say, "Remember how down and how scared we all were?" -- and be able to do so from a place that is genuinely happier and more hopeful. I wish everybody the best, and hope that there are better times to come.

Hey, Get a First Life!

Yeah, that was my first reaction too when hearing about Second Life® for the first time. The tech press ragged on SL^TM mercilessly for attracting more fringe-y, parents'-basement-dwelling gamer types who like to dress up as Teenage Mutant Ninja Kittycats and fewer legitimate businesses into its virtual world. CSI and The Office featured it in episodes, and of course the Office character who was into SL was Dwight K. Schrute.

None of that made the concept all that attractive for me. After having spent many years as a historical re-enactor with some of the biggest, whiniest get-a-lifers on the planet, entering a virtual world for more of the same just sounded to me like another online dungeon game without even the fun of whacking the heads off some monsters (or get-a-lifers) and pillaging their lairs.

I even scoffed when the company I work for started investing time, people, and resources into SL. "Nice work if you can get it," I snickered. "We oughta make a mint offa that."

And then one day a few weeks ago, something just came over me. The company was offering a virtual meeting and presentation by an author whose latest book happened to be about a topic I need to understand. Maybe it was the chance to learn something, a lure that works on me much in the same way a piece of leftover steak works on Seamus. Maybe it was the chance to look at scenery that didn't have friggin' dirty snow all over it.

Anyway, next thing you know, this happened...



Greg came upstairs into the office, saw what I was up to, and confessed that he'd been into SL for a few months already. He'd wanted me to join him there, but didn't quite know how I'd take the concept. Actually, he did -- and he didn't want to hear all the delightfully witty things I'd have had to say on the subject.

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da. In a couple of days, they have built (well, rented) a Home Sweet Home, with a couple of dogs running in the yard...



...of Tip Corbett and Kate Welsh... (Because we couldn't get the names Desmond and Molly Jones from the registration server)



Happy ever after in the marketplace, I've just been bowled completely over by the amount of time, effort, enthusiasm, and just plain creativity have been poured into my company's "islands" in the virtual world. So much so, in fact, that I've taken the basic classes offered by my company with an aim of becoming a trainer myself. I've been able to get to know some fellow employees whom I wouldn't have met otherwise, and I've discovered what a great virtual community my company has. Folks like me who work from home without any real company interaction will be able to feel a part of the community again.

IBM likes the idea so much that it has just inked a deal with Linden Labs to run the SL software on its own private grid to create its own separate interactive employee community. IBM just might be the kind of "legitimate business" that the tech press hasn't managed to rag on. I've also had occasion to meet a number of small online business owners and some mighty talented artists and musicians who might not be making enough money in SL to retire, but who have found another creative outlet in which to shine.

Greg, who had one of his BU professors recommend SL to him, is a member of a bunch of classical music groups and is learning scripting and animation. He's happily picking up virtual Rothko paintings for the walls. At least we can afford one there!

Turns out my sister-in-law joined SL before either of us did, and we're trying to get my sister involved, too. I'm not denying that it isn't a huge time-sink to keep up on things in two worlds, and heaven knows I didn't need another excuse to spend time on the computer -- but we spend our downtime interacting in ways we don't do when we're watching TV. (Oh, and my virtual self has three dogs -- one of which is a rehome -- and Greg's has a cat.)

If you're ever in the virtual neighborhood, drop one of us a note. It would be a hoot to hang out with people whom we know in RL. Okay, so we won't be able to whack the heads off any get-a-lifers and take their bags of stale Cheetos, but just being in the world can work its own strong magic on us -- and that's more attractive than Cheetos anytime.

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Trademark Stuff: Second Life is a registered trademark of Linden Lab. SL is a trademark of Linden Lab. This is how my editors always have me use trademarks in my day job, so I hope Linden's copyright folks are okay with it.

Quiz Time!

What's cold, white, and enormously unwelcome right about now?

A. Karl Rove
B. the heating oil bill
C. last week's leftover mashed potatoes
D. This...



If you answered "D," you get 100%. Answers of "All of the above" are also acceptable.

Yep. We're right in the middle of getting smacked with another 8-12" of the white crap. We've gone beyond the "enough is enough" stage. I'll have to check the papers to be sure, but this latest snow dump has probably pushed our seasonal snowfall over 100". Whatever we have, it probably isn't a statewide record, or even a regional one -- but we're definitely having one of those old-fashioned winters that everybody seems to want so badly until we actually get one. Next thing you know, you'll be hearing about kids walking 6 miles to school every day, uphill both ways, and all of the other things that always seem to have happened "back when I was your age." Well, not my age. You've heard it before, though.

Right about now, there are only two things keeping me going:

1. My tickets to a couple of Spring Training games in Arizona next week (Cubbies at Ho-Ho-Kam! Boo-yeah!)

2. The possibility, however frickin' remote, that we might get one of those old-fashioned springs

Has anybody seen that groundhog? Oh, yeah, that's right. He's buried under 4 feet of snow, like everything else! Anybody for a little groundhog barbecue after this stuff finally melts?

MacRanting and a Festivus Miracle

If Apple were really sincere about offering OS versions that were completely friendly and easy to install, they'd give them names like "Golden Retriever," "Collie," or even "Newfoundland." The fact that they name their OS X releases after cats should be the first tipoff.

Mind you, I love my Macbook Pro more than I love some of my relatives, and I completely expect upgrades to be relatively painless. I've owned Macs for roughly 22 years now, and have never had an upgrade problem. (Yeah, I know that dates me. Would you believe I was still in diapers when I got my first Mac?)

Then along comes Leopard. All the buzz I've read said, "Back up everything and it'll be easy as falling off a bar stool -- I mean log." Backups are Life Itself, and I maintain a small army of backup external drives just for such purposes, so this advice made perfect sense to me. Little did I know as I was backing up this time that for once, my anal-retentiveness might pay off.

I pulled the shrink-wrap off the Leopard box (wicked nifty packaging!), inserted the disc, booted, and prepared for a simple, un-Windows-like installation experience. The installation routine asked me all the usual questions, verified the install disk, and installed.

At the very end of the installation, it brought up a giant dialog box saying, "Sorry, but we couldn't install Leopard. Seeya." What it didn't say was that the upgrade process had also taken a bite out of the existing information on my boot partition. Not only did I not have Leopard installed, but my old Tiger disk wouldn't even boot! At least my Windows partition hadn't been corrupted, so I could run XP and be glad I had half a computer left. There are Mac users out there who probably have nightmares about only having Windows available, but any OS in a storm... My UNIX (Solaris) box was still running, too -- but I don't have to maintain it. Thanks to UNIX, I can bring this blog entry to you today. At least something in this office is running properly.

I'll say this for AppleCare: You may grow old and gray waiting for your call to be answered, but you always get a competent human being. The most exotic accent I heard on the other end of the phone was Canadian, eh? (Don't get me wrong. I have no beef with people in South Asia earning a living. When you're under a lot of stress, though, it's a blessing to be able to speak with someone who understands you without a struggle. South Asian callers probably hope they don't get someone from Boston on the other end of the line.)

During the first call, I waited on hold for 45 minutes before having to hang up and go attend a kennel club meeting. When I returned, it was too late to call AppleCare again, so I tried a few low-level UNIX tricks, got a few additional error messages, and made no further progress in repairing the damage.

This morning, I went through all of the usual automated quiz questions. If Apple had had an option where one could enter a case number instead of having to go through "MacBook Pro. No. No. Yes. No" a gazillion times, this would have been a good place to add it.

I did finally reach a second-tier tech, who listened to my issues and admitted, "I'll have to escalate this one. I can't help you any further here." While I waited on hold for the third-tier tech, I was accidentally (?) disconnected. Back to "MacBook Pro. No. No. Yes. No." a second time.

Reached another human, and got cut off again. "MacBook Pro. No. No. Yes. No."

Finally, the old cliche "Third time's the charm" proved to be just that. I reached the third-tier tech, told him my tale of woe, and was able to get the disk back to the point where I could erase and install Leopard onto it.

The first install failed, but the erase portion of the program had done its work. My disk had been wiped clean enough so that the installer could actually see it, and it appeared to have been repaired. (There was nothing left on it to corrupt!) Heartened slightly, I attempted a second installation, all the while attempting to breathe normally.

It was a Festivus miracle! The second time, the install actually took the expected hour instead of blowing up right away! I still held my breath, crossed my fingers, and knocked on wood at the restart... but there was the Apple logo, and the little spinning "daisy" thingie at the bottom, and...!

I saw a desktop! It even showed icons for all of my hard drives, including my boot drive! In the spirit of the impending holiday, all I had to say was Halle-frickin'-lujah! I was absolutely sure I'd have to mail my computer out to East Overshoe and wait until Groundhog Day to see it again.

Not that I'm back to normal just yet, but at least Normal is in sight. I still have to restore all of my preferences and get my files back to where I want them, reconfigure my wireless connection and my syncing setup, and reinstall anything I might have lost when I had to erase the disk. At least I was able to back up all of my data and at least most of my installed applications to my external disk, so things could be a helluva lot worse. In the meantime, I have a pretty new interface to explore.

Is there a moral to this story? If there is, it's that it pays to be anal, and spare hard drives are wicked cheap these days. Oh, and never trust any software that's named after a cat.

Bogus Journey, Eh?

A couple of weeks ago, I took a week of vacation time and headed off to the BCCC National Specialty out in Victoria, BC. I'd been promising my friend Ann that I'd come to see her new house on Vancouver Island anyway, so the Specialty seemed like just the right time to pay a visit. In addition, this was the show where Dinah won Best Puppy in Show last year, so I felt the need to come back and support this year's entries. (I supported them in a monetary sense, too -- I underwrote the cost of the trophies for Best Puppy and Senior Puppy Bitch.)

Greg likes to play word games, and will do so at any opportunity. He adores puns, spoonerisms, twisting letters around, and any other play on words (or parts thereof). That's probably what makes him such a crack Scrabble player, but some days it's also like friggin' Final Jeopardy just trying to decipher what he's saying when he's being clever. Anyway, it came as no surprise when he referred to the airline I'd be taking to Vancouver as "Untied Airlines." Maybe he's not so much a punster as a prophet.

Even though I showed up an hour and a half before my flight, the automated check-in kiosk at Manchester Airport informed me that I was too late to check in my bag, and that I would have to do so at the gate. After the usual security checks and other stuff, I arrived at the gate and offered my bag to be checked. The gate agent was none too pleased, but she understood the situation and tagged my bag for me. Perhaps she was the one who scribbled in the secret airline code meaning "Lose this one." I'll never know for sure.

Due to the usual bad weather in Chicago, our plane sat on the runway for 45 minutes or an hour after its scheduled takeoff time -- just long enough so that most of the people on my flight missed their connections, and I just barely made mine. The plane from Chicago to Vancouver was stuffed full of humanity, just as most flights are these days. I got to share the back end of the cabin with about a million crying babies, including a pair of twins right behind me who kept kicking my seat back, and who smelled pretty friggin' ripe after 4 hours in the air between diaper changes. I listened to my iPod, tried to hold my breath, and made significant progress on the second of Joyce's Tofutsies socks.

When I arrived at Vancouver, I discovered that my bag had been lost (big surprise there), and that I would have to fly my final leg on the seaplane to the island without it. This wasn't the first, or the fifth, or the 25th time that my luggage has been lost, so I filled out the usual forms, left the usual instructions, and proceeded to the seaplane terminal. In times past, my bag has usually caught up with me that same night or the next day. I wasn't terribly worried.

The seaplane was an E-ticket ride if there ever was one -- smooth, beautiful, and the Absolute Best Way Ever to see the area between Vancouver City and Vancouver Island. If I'd packed my camera, it would have been lost anyway -- but I still regret not being able to get any decent pictures from the air. The tiny camera on my cell phone just wouldn't have done the view justice.

Ann and Ray met me at the seaplane terminal on the island -- and they brought Penny, the world's silliest Old English Sheepdog, to greet me. Penny and I have had a long-standing mutual admiration society going. Even though we hadn't seen each other for a couple of years, Penny was still so excited to see me that she whimpered as she slimed me all over. That dog has always given a mean free facial, however slimy.

Vancouver Island is gorgeous, and my gracious hosts took me around to show me the sights, including this place in Coombs, BC, where they have goats grazing on the sod roof. I searched for some tacky postcards and couldn't find any, sad to say. They had some Wicked Good "Goats on the Roof" T-shirts, and I should have bought one -- but little did I know that my clothing situation was about to turn desperate.

In between jaunts out to see the island, I spent time on the phone to United -- er, Untied -- Airlines, trying to determine the whereabouts of my bag. My cell phone and Blackberry had already started showing the red logos meaning "Charge us now or you'll be sorry." Did I mention that my chargers were in the bag?

Every time I called the airline, I would be put on hold for a minimum of 20 minutes, waiting for some support rep in India to pick up the phone. (I have come to the conclusion that companies who outsource their customer support in India basically don't want their customers to bother them -- or they don't want customers at all, for that matter.) In typical fashion, the people I did speak to were unfailingly polite and unfailingly unable to help. In the meantime, my bag hadn't shown up for 3 days, and we weren't going to be home to sign for the bag if it were to arrive. We were headed to the dog show, and I had nothing but some very old and smelly clothes on my back.

Ann took me to the local Wal-Mart to buy enough shirts, socks, underwear, and toiletries to get by. I was also able to find chargers for my phone and Blackberry, so I was at least able to shed my stinky traveling clothes and get back in touch with the outside world. I have never in my life bought clothes at Wal-Mart -- for which I should sue the airline for pain and suffering -- but I'm glad they were there when I needed them. I found some that weren't too horrible, plus an emergency backup pair of black jeans (since my nice trousers were on tour, and we had a banquet to attend).

We attended a bag-stuffing party on the island the night before we left for the show. Ray and another generous Beardie person had put up the funds for the show's souvenir gift bags, and we would all be recruited to come to the show chair's house, enjoy a fabulous buffet, and help to fill the bags with all of the goodies collected from various sources and donors. We drank, we ate, we shared laughs with the Australian visitors, and had a great time smooching all the Beardies. Some hosts have the ability to treat an entire household of guests like one large extended family. Our hosts that night certainly did -- I feel as though we were all kinfolks by evening's end.

I called the airline yet again, sat drumming my fingers on hold for the obligatory 20 minutes, and was relieved beyond measure when a woman with an identifiably Southern accent finally picked up the phone. At last -- I'd found a support rep who was not only polite, but who understood my situation. I explained to her that we were leaving town, so no one would be home to sign for my bag. "First, let me find out where your bag actually is," she told me. This, after three days where no one knew where it was. She punched a few keys on a computer keyboard. "Apparently your bag is in London." She paused for a minute, expecting me to start shouting and spouting obscenities.

I really thought I was going to start shouting too, but I opened my mouth to reply -- and started to laugh instead. It was all I could do. I didn't have an obscenity left in me.

Finally, when I could stop hooting and the nice Southern lady realized I wasn't capable of killing her, I gasped, "My bag got a better vacation than I did!". She joined in the giggles, and then arranged with me to just have my bag sent back to Manchester. I could pick it up on my way home. (I had to take it on faith that the bag would not then be routed to Manchester, England. At least I could have had someone there retrieve it for me.)

A load of laundry and a borrowed duffel bag later, and we (and Molly and Summer, Ann and Ray's two Beardie girls) were off to Victoria for the dog show. Although I'd left my camera at home because I worried that my (lost) bag would already exceed the seaplane's 25-poun weight limit, I did try to snap some pictures with my cell phone. Here's a shot of the harbor where we waited for the ferry.



Pretty, isn't it? What you can't see is that there are not one -- not two -- but three bald eagles in that picture. Two are in the trees, and one is perched on a tree stump down near the water. (Ray couldn't capture them with his ultra-mega-zoom lens at this distance, either.)

We had a great time at the show. Ann and Summer received High in Trial in obedience and also qualified in CKC rally. Little Bess Burfitt (Breaksea Another Song), Dinah and Buffy's half-sister, was at the show with all of her co-owners -- plus Travis, another relative whose dad was Breaksea Gone West (Dylan). Bess is a carbon copy of Dinah and Buffy, and I was compelled to smooch her the entire weekend. She took first in her class at the specialty. There were all-breed shows going on at the fairgrounds at the same time, but I don't know how she fared in those. She might have taken at least one first place there as well. She didn't get to Winners Bitch, though. Bess is right at the stage where Dinah was this spring: obviously adolescent, and not likely to attract notice from judges looking for more mature specimens. I reassured her mom that Dinah had gone through the exact same thing, and Dinah was now starting to win shows again. Travis took Winners Dog at the Specialty from a very competitive field, and Laura (his mom) was so hapy she stood in the first-place slot, wiping her eyes. Travis also won a few times at the all-breed shows, but I'm not sure whether he advanced far enough to finish his Canadian championship while he was there.

One evening we were invited to dinner at the home of a friend who lives nearby. Diane is the local rescue coordinator for Beardies in that part of the world, and she was the one who got the call when Molly (Ann and Ray's three-legged Beardie rescue) was in need of help. Diane introduced us to Blue, a 12-year-old Beardie boy who had been neglected in his previous home. His people didn't take very good care of him, and they'd let him wander. The poor boy was bony and had some sort of problem with infected nails and feet, but he was sweet as anything and leaned on anyone who would scratch his ears. He looked exactly like my Duncan. I would have taken him home in an instant, only the airline probably would have lost him on me. Ann and Ray said they'd "think about it," but by the next morning, it was obvious that Blue was coming home to their house.

We also had the great pleasure of running into some friends of ours from Washington State and their handsome brown Beardie boy, Beo (short for Beowulf). Dinah met Beo at last year's US Specialty and thought he was mighty handsome. She even gave him the little ear-sniff she reserves for only her very favorite Beardie boys. His people, Pam and Geoff, are two of the nicest folks you'd ever want to meet. I only see them every year or every other year, but it's as though we just saw one another the week before.

Here's Beo (who has a CDX and at least one rally title, by the way):



After the show was over and we said our goodbyes to everyone, Pam and Geoff and Beo caravanned with us back to Ann and Ray's house. (We drove back instead of taking the ferry -- and it was scenic!) This photo is supposed to show the end of the bay where the ferry docks:



So much for the power of a VGA cell phone camera. Trust me, it was gorgeous. You could even see Mount Baker in the distance, and just the teeniest glimpse of the city of Vancouver.

Pam and Geoff own a VW camper van, and they camped out in Ann and Ray's yard for the night before heading out to see the sights of the island. We shared a couple of meals and a few beers at a pub the night before they departed.

The answering machine light was blinking when Ann and Ray and I got back to the house. Ray started listening to the messages. One began with, "This is Air Canada at Nanaimo Airport. We have a bag here...". Apparently my long-lost bag had finally made it to the island after all.

When I called Air Canada, the man in Baggage explained that he'd sent my bag back to Manchester when no one answered, and that the bag would be there waiting for me when I arrived home. I never did hear whether it had a nice time in London. As I packed my borrowed duffel bag for the trip home, I swore to myself that it would fit in the overhead compartment in the cabin. I even mailed some things home to ensure that the bag would remain unstuffed enough to maintain carry-on status.

My flight home on Air Canada was fairly uneventful, though I grew a bit tense in Toronto when it looked as though the long line at Customs might prevent me from making my connecting flight to Manchester in time. As it turned out, all of the other passengers on my flight were in the same line (and the same situation) as I was.

When I arrived in Manchester, the baggage office was (of course) closed. I peered in through the glass and found -- wonder of wonders! -- my long-lost bag standing with a flock of other bags. I returned to the check-in counter and stood in a mob, awaiting a chance to ask a clerk to send someone to open the baggage counter.

A surly woman arrived, displeased at the prospect of having to help people, and stomped off to the baggage counter, with those of us who'd lost bags flocking behind like ducklings. When we got there, another man had opened the counter and was reuniting bags with owners. The woman stomped off again, muttering. He brought my world-traveling bag out to me and mentioned that the airline was fairly good about honoring reimbursement requests. He reminded me to save all my receipts, and I mentioned that I had.

Finally, I dragged both bags out to the car and drove home, pulled into the garage, and yanked out my bags. I swore a solemn oath that this bag would never fly the friendly skies again. I'm not entirely sure I'm willing to give Untied Airlines another go, myself.

Good Intentions are Overrated

"I musta woke up this morning with a bug up my ass.
I think I'll just haul off and belt the next jerk that I pass."

--Todd Rundgren

Geez, it's no coincidence that I've just received information in the mail about my upcoming colonoscopy appointment (talk about a "rite of passage"!). Thanks to good intentions gone terribly awry, I've been feeling lately like I'm already undergoing the procedure -- only without anesthesia. Now hear this: the Favors Office is closed until further notice.

First, the chair of the judges' selection committee from my local kennel club sends me the email equivalent of a flaming bag of dog poo left on the doorstep (a practice generally referred to in the Dilbert business world as "seagull management"). It basically stated, "I'm too busy to select judges for obedience and rally, so you do it." No "please". No "Would you mind helping?". Just "Hey, you. Your time's worth less than mine." I try to be a good sport, so I made an effort to swallow the first two-word response (hint: not "Merry Christmas") that rose to my lips, and attempted to finish the job that had just been arrogantly and unceremoniously dumped on me. FYI, I'm not even the rally chair.

I called some judges, finally got one on the phone who wasn't already snapped up by another club for that weekend, and reported back to the chair -- who then called me up and proceeded to ream me out for picking someone she didn't like. Sorry I left my crystal ball at the office, or I would have known whom not to call. "Merry Christmas."

Next... it seems to be raining rescues lately, after a long period of time when there were none in our region. Our local regional rep is a saint and a half, and she has helped hundreds of dogs in bad situations. She emailed about a dog wasting away in a shelter on Nantucket. Mind you, Nantucket is (per Mapquest) 194.24 miles from here. I tried to reach someone I knew on Martha's Vineyard, but apparently she's moved and left no way to get in touch. So... I called the one person I know who lives on Nantucket, and reported back that I'd made contact. What do I get but an email saying, "You should have contacted somebody else."?! Excuse me, but where's that crystal ball again?

Just be warned, innocent bystanders, that I've just plumb run out of Nice for the time being. If you want something done, better find another psychic -- or at least someone who's better able to guess What Not To Do. "Merry Christmas."

Enough With Everything Already!

And people wonder why I call him "Shameless"...

Enough With the Friggin' Skunks Already!

Seems funny to be talking about it now, but last Sunday we had yet another visitation from those strange black-and-white kitties. That morning, it was brightly sunny when I let the dogs outside... and what should I see wandering drunkenly around the backyard but another good-sized specimen of Stenchius Polecattius?!

Charlie and Seamus spotted it immediately and commenced to stampeding the fence, doing their best sheepdogs-of-the-Baskervilles impressions. Seamus tried to climb over the fence. Dinah bounded behind first one boy and then the other, barking excitedly because they were excited. Meanwhile, the skunk staggered around in circles, stopping to gaze in befogged amazement at the three lively noisemakers gyrating before him.

Skunks are nocturnal; you're not supposed to see them in daylight. If you do, they're rabid, they're roadkill, or they're waking up from a long winter's nap and are deeply disoriented (just like me before my morning caffeine). I called the animal control officer, who happened to be up and reading his Sunday paper. He assured me that the skunk was probably experiencing Case #3 -- sleepy rather than rabid -- and that it should be back in hiding within a couple of hours. If not, he advised, I should call him back, and he'd come out to shoot it. Mind you, I'm all for live-and-let-live, but not where rabies or the safety of my little canine/feline family is concerned.

Charlie has an iron-clad recall; he returned the second I called him, with Dinah still bouncing at his heels. (Dinah's recall isn't quite as solid -- she still subscribes to the independent school of thought that requires a good reason for anything. She doesn't want to miss out on any reward that Charlie might get, though.) Seamus, the dog I'm actually working with in obedience, possesses the power to humiliate me at any time. He has a fine "laboratory recall," but the perverse little bugger enjoys screwing with me at the worst possible times in real-life situations. I worry that someday he would happily run in front of an oncoming Hummer just because he enjoys defying me.

True to his usual methods, Seamus refused to come when I called him, forcing me to chase him around the dog yard until I cornered him and hauled him bodily up the stairs away from the skunk. This is not a method I ordinarily employ for training recalls, but there was no time for subtlety. I cursed; he barked. It's a miracle my neighbors' windows didn't crack from the long strings of cuss words that escaped me in the process.

Once back inside, Seamus's recall became rapid enough when it came time for him to take a nice ride in the car to rally class. You're think he was trained, forgoodnessake! We departed, glancing back at the yard as we pulled away to see whether the skunk had left.

By the time we returned from class, the little stinker (the skunk -- not Seamus, the other stinker) had apparently regained its senses and scuttled away. Good friggin' riddance, I say. Don't come back.

Enough With the Weather Already, Too!



A few days ago, Dinah performed her ritual dance to celebrate mud season...

Mother Nature is toying with us these days as well. Approximately 48 hours ago, the thermometer read nearly 70 degrees, and we appeared to be celebrating our infamous fifth season here in Maine: Mud. Not five minutes after Greg finished cleaning the floors, the dogs commenced to bringing the outdoors indoors on their muddy little Beardie feet. The experience was nearly worthwhile, if only because we could open a couple of windows and could fetch the mail without having to bundle up first.

Scratch that. Yesterday, the latest installment in our weather saga fell out of the sky -- about a foot of it. Greg still has the intestinal fortitude to be happy to see snow at this time in the season, but I responded to it with approximately the same the same exclamations of joy as the ones I'd used on the skunk.

Our Cat Needs Vocational Counseling

Persephone napping on the job

We currently have a repairman here working on our treadmill. The incline function stopped functioning a few weeks ago. The treadmill still works fine if you just want to trek on a flat distance, but going uphill just wasn't happening.

The treadmill is under warranty, so Greg called the repair number, and a technician determined that the motor had failed. He had a new motor shipped to us, and scheduled the repair date for today.

Come to find out that a mouse had crawled into the downstairs family room (almost literally under the cat's nose, since she lives down there and sleeps a few feet from where we keep the gym equipment) and decided to take up residence in the treadmill motor.

Unfortunately, since we're still using the treadmill, the story doesn't end happily for the mouse. The technician just pulled it out of the motor with barbecue tongs, and it just received a less-than-proper Christian burial in our garage trash receptacle.

The cat has thus far refused to comment.

Where'd Everything Go?

You might have noticed that this blog's sporting a somewhat leaner, less colorful look than before. All my links and buttons have temporarily disappeared, but they will be back soon.

Here's the thing. Our local cable company used to be Adelphia. As corrupt as the company and its management were, I never had more than a few minutes' worth of trouble in all of the almost-six years I've had the service. When the local service was sold to Time Warner Cable, I was actually pleased (more, relieved that it wasn't Cox).

Unfortunately, the switchover has been more than merely rocky. I've gone entire days without Internet access, which is a Very Bad Thing if you telecommute. Time Warner apparently told our town officials that the changeover could take up to six months, and that the customers would just have to be content with appallingly bad service until then. I didn't hear anything about their being willing to wait to be paid for six months, however.

DSL has finally reached our little corner of the sticks, so I'm switching to DSL for a year or so while Time Warner irons out its many issues. Unfortunately, I hosted all of my links and buttons on my Adelphia account, so I'll have to remove them from the blog page until I can copy them to another Web account. They'll be back soon, though -- and maybe I'll have the time to create one of my own as well.

Spam, Spam, Spam. I Don't Like Spam!

Well, folks, I'm sorry -- but I finally had to enable comment moderation on my blogs. You would think that comment verification (as in typing those nonsense words in by hand) would have discouraged all of the bots and most of the lazier spammers, but I ended up getting spammed by someone bearing the moniker of Deep Thapa who actually went to the trouble to post long lines of comment spam for some crummy online Bingo gambling site.

Anywho, I hated to do it, but comments are now moderated. Forgive me if yours don't show up as quickly as they used to, but I still appreciate your inputs as much as I always have. I just have to play Comment Police now, and it bugs me.

Be on the lookout for Deep Thapa, which is code for "I'm a scumbag."

Journeys: Musical, Culinary, and Otherwise

Now that people often travel with their laptops and can write to their blogs with their cell phones, some meme someplace must be going around that asks the questions: "What's the weirdest place where you ever blogged?" Not that it's all that exotic, but I started this entry on my Blackberry while riding on the New York City subway.

Yesterday Greg and I day-tripped to NYC to attend this year's ACA American Music Festival. The festival itself stretches over a period of 4-5 days, and attracts some name composers and some not-so-famous types. One thing you can absolutely predict from year to year is that you never know just what you're going to hear on the program.

A NYC-based clarinetist named Meghian Stoops performed Greg's solo clarinet piece, Polyline, and played the living heck out of it. In rehearsal, Greg had encouraged her to be as dramatic as she wished, and to keep the audience on the edge of its collective seat during each pause. Meghian took that advice and ran with it, and the reception was really enthusiastic. She rocked, she rolled, she swayed, and she molded every single sound that escaped her clarinet. After the piece was over and Meghian had taken her bows, Richard Brooks (who sat in front of us) turned to Greg and asked (my paraphrase), "Where did you GET her?!" If Meghian wants to play the Festival again and there are pieces that call for clarinet, I'm sure that the composers would just about fight to have her.

Not all of the works on the program met with such enthusiasm, however. I'm happy to report that this year the audience was not forced to sit through pieces that featured a woman moaning into a microphone in counterpoint with a tape recorder (yes, I've had to sit through that stuff in years past). However, the second piece on this program sounded like nothing so much as Seamus whining to be fed, only the whining went on for something like 20 minutes. If that piece wasn't entitled "Squeeeeeee," then it should have been.

And then there's the piece that should have been called "What the **** Was That?". It featured a husband-and-wife duo (piano and violin), and they actually did play piano and violin during the piece. However, the piece also called for them to cough, bark, shuffle and stomp their feet, clap their hands, and drum on the piano. I'm shocked that the composer didn't also expect them to sneeze and belch. (Almost every piano piece featured on the program required the pianist to pluck the piano strings and/or drum on the piano. Was that some sort of requirement?)

Not that the day was entirely unproductive, mind you. Greg met up with the sax quartet who played Richard Brooks's piece "Four-Play" and a sax quartet by Greg's old teacher Lukas Foss. The sax players were pleased to hear that Greg has a sax quartet in progress. They might even play some of it at next year's concert, if all works out well.

As for me, I got most of a sock cuff done while listening to the rehearsals and then the concerts. More on knitting stuff a little later, though.

Greg and I had planned to visit Christer's, a Scandinavian restaurant in NYC, but we hiked all the way over there after the concert to find the building in the process of being renovated for a new tenant. Greg had actually called the phone number listed for Christer's, got the answering machine, and made a reservation for us. Go figure.

Fortunately, Aquavit (the famous Scandinavian restaurant) wasn't terribly far away from where we were, so we hoofed it down there and asked if they could seat us. Bless their hearts, even without a reservation on a Saturday evening, they had room for a couple of early diners in the cafe portion of the restaurant. We ordered the smorgasbord and some homemade flavored aquavit (mine: raspberry and ginger. Greg's: grapefruit and lemongrass), and had ourselves a fine Viking feast. Since we were running short of time and had a plane to catch, we had our entrees boxed up and brought them with us.

Leave it to the NYC subway folks to announce a sudden change in subway route due to construction -- on a Saturday night. While we were counting the minutes and hoping we'd make it to JFK on time, the conductor announced, "Due to construction, the last stop on this route is Grand Central Station." Because we needed to catch the train headed our to JFK, we hopped off the subway at another stop and waited for a connecting train to get us closer to the one we really wanted.

At that point, we were sure we'd be doomed to spend the night in the airport if we didn't get the correct connection. Due to construction routing and some quirk of fate, the next train to arrive was the train we originally needed to catch in order to reach the airport. We made it to JFK in just enough time to be able to sit for a minute or two before boarding was announced for our flight to Portland. What are the odds?!

Before I Forget...

One of the truly nifty things about our visiting Aquavit was that the night before, we were enjoying Eritrean food in Portland. Who'd have thought it?

We'd discovered Asmara (the Eritrean restaurant) during a visit to the art museum. Unfortunately, we found it only after having eaten lunch at what used to be the Free Street Taverna (and which is now an upscale pub). The seductive cloud of spice escaping through the front door practically dragged us inside the place by our nostrils. We were already desperately full from our pub lunch, but swore we'd return.

After putting the puppies in the doggie hotel for the night (since we'd be in NYC too long for them to wait at home), we headed to Asmara for dinner on Friday night. That same cloud of spice was waiting for us at the corner of the street.

Eritrean food is eaten with the hands, much like Moroccan food, and it's served on a flatbread "plate." Although the spicing is different, the basic composition of the food reminded me a little of Indian food: beef and spinach, lamb and potatoes, and mixture of vegetables in a mild yellow sauce. We devoured the stuff, along with mango juice and coriander-laced African coffee (boiled like Turkish coffee, served black with sugar in a demitasse cup).

That cloud of spice lived up to its promise. We'll definitely go back there.

All This and Knitting Too

Even though I've spent more time away from home than here lately, I haven't entirely abandoned the knitting. I have a collection of pairs of socks in progress. Two pairs have one sock done and the other halfway there; had to rip one second sock back and then toss it into the frog pond because I wasn't paying attention and messed up on the decreases after turning the heel. Yes, eventually I'll get back to that sock, but restarting on a sock after you've ripped out stitches is a bear and a half. I just haven't had the intestinal fortitude to pick it back up yet.

I started the cuff of the first sock in a third pair yesterday. Since I wasn't sure whether I could bring my lovely metal Addi Turbos on the plane, I cast on another sock using the plastic Balene 11" circulars and used those to keep busy while in NYC.

I whipped off a few more scarves for my scarf-loving friend in LA (she's pleased with the last box I shipped to her) and am still working on a Kristina bag from Black Sheep Bags.

After the last flurry of yarn-sale acquisitions, I've had to put myself on another yarn diet for a while. This comes from sheer necessity: I honestly have no place else to put any more yarn. If I don't knit some stuff from my current stash, I'll be forced to move all of us into the hayloft and leave the house to be taken over by the yarn.

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