Home of the Snarkmaiden

Morning in Seattle. Unedited webcam shot from a few minutes ago. No fancy Photoshop filters needed, just mist on the lens...

Sunlight! We get sunlight! I'm just so grateful the mornings are getting lighter again, every time I step out on the back porch with the dogs and it isn't pitch black any more. And spring is definitely sprung in these parts, too -- forsythia alight like flaming brands, stands of daffodil and narcissus and muscaria, trees blooming pink and white, cream and fuchsia. And like a poison green mist in a bad sci fi movie, the trees are leafing out all over the hillsides with promises of summer yet to come. For those still in winter, I have seen it myself: spring is possible, spring is coming!

Spotted on Pinterest, this rather striking portrait of Sherlock Holmes created by morphing together photos of multiple actors who played the role, including Basil Rathbone, Robert Downey Jr., Benedict Cumberbatch, and Jeremy Brett. I find the fusion strangely compelling and while I think it most nearly resembles Rathbone, it keeps tantalizing me with a sort of facial familiarity that I can't quite place. Faces in dreams are often like that for me, almost-familiar, but layered or substituted in such a way that on waking I usually can't trace who the face belonged to -- although, in a rare breakthrough the other morning I was able to piece together the fact that my dreams had cast Lee Pace as Cory Doctorow. Don't ask me, I can't explain it either. But this dream-face Holmes, who is he reminding me of? Apparently a couple of the commenters on the Tumblr in question think it's Richard Armitage, but while I can see their point, I don't think that's it. Nearest I can come is the young Sean Penn crossed with some half-recollected leading man from the late 1930s.

So, does this fabulist Holmes remind you of anyone? Do you see faces clearly when you dream?

Yes, it's cherry blossom time on the UW Quad again, bringing with it the hordes of flower worshipers, taking selfies or posing for friends in the branches of a tree or just against the clouds of lush, lacy white blossom. It's as reliable as swallows at Capistrano: the return of the cherry blossoms and with them, the hordes of eager photographers.

Yes, I'm obviously guilty, too. My excuse is, I'll post some of these to the department Facebook page -- pretty pictures of the Quad always attract hits.

One of our junior-most faculty came into the office this morning to tell me that she had been laughing out loud on the bus to work while reading my minutes of the previous month's faculty meeting. It's always gratifying when someone notices. Most especially when it's my very favoritest of they junior faculty, which is a very hard won laurel, given what a charming, amiable, pleasant, and interesting bunch we currently have among the juniors. It gives a person hope for the future, it does. And today I made someone laugh out loud. That is a thing.

Also today, I noticed a thing about my native language for the first time. So, is it weird, or just culturally revealing, that Swedish has two completely different words that translate into English as "worse"? Yeah, I know värre and sämre are used in somewhat different contexts, but really, how many ways do you really need to be able to say that things are worse, especially when you only have one way to say they're "better"? Upbeat folks, my people.

And speaking of upbeat, today I also gave my first oral presentation of the quarter in my Mandarin class. It was on educational inequality and child poverty among ethnic minorities in Hong Kong. Yeah, it's possible I got a little too ambitious in my choice of topic. But I can tell you what the child poverty rate for Filipino immigrants in Hong Kong is. In Mandarin. And With PowerPoint, because we were strongly encouraged to use slides. I don't do PowerPoint. *ptui* *hairball*. And because for me there is no such thing as the final draft of anything, just the most recent before the deadline, naturally I went off script winging it at a couple of points. That did not go entirely well. But it is over. And hey, given the near fluent, been-to-China young things in my class, I may well be Cao 老师's worst Third Year Mandarin student, but I still am a Third Year Mandarin student, so that's still something.

And I trotted down to the student union to get in on the last day of on-campus flu vaccinations for the season so I don't have to remember to go in to the doctor or queue up at the pharmacy or whatever. Must see if there's a way to self-report flu shots to my medical group's web page, though, so the flu shot reminder goes away. On the plus side, the line for getting a shot was short and quick. On the minus(?) side, the vaccination clinic had been popular enough that they had run out of Starbucks cards. I signed up on the list for them to e-mail me one. Not sure how that will work. And of course I hadn't been thinking about immunizations when I got dressed this morning, and had thoughtlessly put on a long-sleeved merino mock turtle. Suboptimal for accessing a shoulder for the jab, at least in a public ballroom with various folks of all genders and sexes wandering about. The nurse advised me to pull aside the collar as the better choice.

"But don't do it until I'm ready," she said. "We don't like to have people strangling themselves."

"Yeah, I said, "That would kind of defeat the purpose. Dead people don't catch flu."

"We should make that our new slogan."

But no new pictures taken today -- it was gray and sullen all day, and the weekend windstorm blew off many of the pretty leaves. Also, Chinese ate my brain. Luckily I took a metric buttload of pictures last week when there was sun. I'm still in pursuit of a really good photo of how wonderful the view from my office windows is in October, and have failed for another year, but here's a placeholder until I get it right.

As of tonight, I have decided that the most appropriate collective noun for an assemblage of miscellaneous house pets is "a complication". You can roll your own examples, I'm sure, but this evening when I let out the dogs for one final bio break before I go to bed, there was a very large, quite fresh but wholly dead rat lovingly laid out on the back door mat. No doubt this is why Shoobie had been hanging out by the back door with such determined interest. But since both dogs pass the rat by as they dash out into the yard I figure I'm safe in waiting until the dogs are back in before disposing of the corpse. Ah, but no.

Neither dog was apparently that interested in peeing, so they both turn around to head back toward the house almost immediately, and I'm figuring I'll grab a plastic bag to pick up the rat with as soon as they're back in the kitchen. But no. Never discount Shoobie's prowess as a serious ratter. As Shoobie gets to the open door, I can practically see the exclamation point go off above his head. He spots the rat, and his whole stout little body vibrates with joy. Wagging his tail in majestic triumph, he grabs the corpse, and with head held high, marches proudly into the kitchen with a dead rat almost as big as his head and several times larger than his dinky little snout clenched firmly between his teeth. Because Shoobie has something, and she does not, Kaylee is now of course Very Interested and she dashes in after him, looming over him and making little sallies to take the rat away.

Shoobie is having none of it. He skitters aside and goes pitter-pattering off into the living room, ridiculous feathery tail curled high over his back like a warlord's banner. Shoobie is mighty. Shoobie is great. Shoobie has the kill, and he's damned if anyone will take his trophy from him now, however ill-gotten. (This is all so very different from when Shoob has a ball -- the minute Kaylee gets interested in a ball Shoobie has been playing with, he drops it and feigns complete disinterest. It's a question of picking your battles, I guess.)

I grab a plastic bag from the recycling dispenser beside the kitchen door to collect the rat with, and follow a distant third. My first two or three sallies to even grab hold of the rat fail, as Shoobie is dodging all malefactors, and every time I try to get a grip on Shoobie, there's Kaylee worming in trying to get her share of whatever fun is to be had. I finally manage to send Kaylee away, corner Shoobie in the dog bed, and manage to get a proper grip on the rat. And also on the deceased rodent. Shoobie will. Not. Let. Go. People will tell you about the stubbornness of bully breed dogs when they have a grip. Hah! Bully dogs are easy. It's the chihuahuas that will out-stubborn a starfish. I gave up trying to wrest if from him since I didn't really want to have to clean splattered rat guts off the oak floor should the corpse fail before Shoobie's will did.

After a couple more rounds of foolishness, finally I managed to get the rat, not by dint of prying it out of Shoobie's jaws but solely because he decided that the rat really was dead after all, and therefore not that interesting.

So yeah. A dog is just a dog, a cat is just a cat, but when they come in groups, they are a complication.


Kaylee and Shoobie share a rat-free moment

Found in a collection of photos of dogs, hanging out car windows. To this one I could only say, "Holy Cow! It's Jay Lake reincarnated as a dog!"

I don't get out of the office enough. My train schedule makes for short days, so I usually skip lunch or eat it at my desk. Today I had a work errand on main campus and decided to bring the camera with me. The light was kinda crappy but it's good to see the fall progressing on main campus. I miss that so. I also collected a pocketful of horse chestnuts, and more photos.

( More pictures behind the veil. )

It's been almost a year since we made an offer on a house in Kent and didn't get it. It is almost a year since we first took a serious look at what became our house.

Quite a lot of changes have crowded into the intervening year. It's interesting to look back and see how my perspective has altered accordingly. The sale of the house we didn't get fell through, as far as we can tell. Neener-neener on them, I say. That other house was between the tracks anyway -- the additional noise from the trains would have been a pretty serious downside. From up on the rise of East Hill, the trains are romantically melancholy, rather than disturbing racket.

In our yard, I've discovered there are three apple trees, not just two, and in the house all the light from those window corners more than compensates for the boxiness. I haven't figured out what all the mystery plants in the garden are, but whatever the irissy-looking things under the big apple are, they're going to bloom purple. Who knows, maybe they are iris. Either way, I do like purple. Meanwhile, the upper terrace of the yard you see above has gone wild and tangly and must be beaten back into submission. It's all one big adventure.

Last year around this time, the view out our windows was the last cherry blossoms on the quad -- a lovely pink cloud. This year, with different windows, the view is a good deal less pink...