senoritafish

Whee! We get to go see this tonight because some friends of mine bought tickets, but then one of them had to go out of town, and she didn't want to go by herself. Mainly because it was his idea, and she'd rather go to the roller derby. She threatened to take my daughter along with her; that might be a good idea. She told me they even have leagues for girls her age, and given what an instigator Avalon is, maybe she'd be good at it. Maybe it would get her to lay off her brother - she and Gareth both got put on computer restriction the other day because I told them about SIX TIMES to leave each other the hell alone. BECAUSE GODDAMMIT MY BED IS NOT A CAGE-MATCH RING.

But I digress. John's mom is taking the kids for the evening and we're going to take the special bus from Lakewood that goes straight up to Hollywood Bowl, no messing with parking, whatever. I picked up some fruit, chips, etc. at lunchtime, and John's going to grab some sandwiches - and maybe an alcoholic beverage or two, and maybe a picnic before John Williams. Yay! Should be fun - John's picking me up in maybe an hour, and off we go.

Things one never expects to have say when becoming a parent:

"Gareth, if you squished that spider in your sister's math book, you're for darn sure cleaning it up out of there!"

Grr. I usually try to put them outside.

Boy, what is with me? Seems like I only make an entry lately when there's a drastic change in the weather. Which there has been lately - abnormally cool summer punctuated with short lengths of record high temperatures. It was over 100°F at my office yesterday, so I don't even want to know how hot it was in San Pedro where I was collecting squid samples. Yes, it is right on the water, but Palos Verdes blocks off any ocean breeze. Not that there was any - the air was pretty much dead still. At least at the second dealer, they sort the boat's load inside their facility, so it was fairly cool in there. The truck's AC seems to be dying though - it was just barely feeling slightly cool when I arrived back at the office (about a 20 minute drive). I stopped at Fresh & Easy for something cool for lunch (I'd brought something frozen to heat up, which just wasn't appealing), and I tell ya, nothing like a grocery store for a place to cool off.

So for a recap of just lately:

• Kids are back to school - Gareth and Angus are now going to the same school again, for the first time in three years. Gareth was a little overwhelmed with the changes the first week of middle school (it's middle school now, when I was going there, it was always "jr. high" - and indeed the school team is the Jr. Oilers, after the high school about a block away). Avalon's the last one at the elementary school, and for the first time, has a teacher one of her brothers had. Angus had her for third grade.



• Two weeks ago (already?) I spent a couple of days in Boise, ID. Last time I was there, I barely got out of the hotel; this time, the HMS agenda items on the Council's plate (which the team I'm on spent the previous two days discussing) finished early, my flight back to LAX wasn't until 8pm, so I got to spend a couple of hours wandering around downtown Boise - and the capitol building. Weirdly, I was trying to find a place for lunch and nearly all the restaurants closed at 2pm , then reopened at 5pm for dinner. Finally found an upscale pizza/wine bar and coincidentally both the hostess and the server had lived in Huntington Beach (after asking where I was from). They had a very good small pizza/salad lunch special, and I'd recommend the place if you're ever in Boise. Especially looking for a late afternoon lunch. Oh, and I also tried Basque food at a rather pricy restaurant that came well recommended - and several of us were less than impressed. I don't know if it was just the restaurant itself or I just picked the wrong thing. Oh well.



• I made a list of topics to write about about a month ago - and I've only gotten to one of them.



• At the top of my agency's intranet website:
  

  Dust off the ol' crystal ball again!  Take the State Budget Survey! (Looks like those of you who chose "When the cows come home" got it right!)




• Part of the update laziness, I guess, is only having a non-starting home PC to write on currently. I could use my phone but I'm just not up to typing the size entries I usually do with my thumbs (and I don't thing the phone browser likes them either - letters start becoming invisible at the end). Anyone just upgrade to Windows 7 and have no further use for their XP disc? Mine didn't come with one, and I'd only need it for attempting repairs and reinstalling a backup registry.



• Scooter is now neutered. In trying to find a vet with a reasonable price for doing this, runsamuck found the range went from $75 for a place in Santa Ana to $350 for the vet closest to us - who used to be our animals' regular vet when her office was in Sunset Beach. However, since she moved to the shopping center close to us, she more than doubled her charges. I suppose it was the rent - that all goes with the realtors calling my neighborhood "prestigeous." We went with Santa Ana. Anyhow, he was so out of it when we picked him up, poor guy.



• runsamuck decided his ponytail is a pain and cut it off. He must have asked me ten times if it was ok with me; however, it's his hair. I'm not going to force him to keep some way he doesn't want it. If I were smart, I'd do the same with mine, but I actually kind of like it.



• We've all had colds; and the dishwasher is going kaput. It refuses to get anything clean, so right now I'm just using it for a giant dish drainer. Which I need to leave for home and go do more of.


Bleh.

Angus has been digging into all things Invader Zim lately and one of his favorite sites is the Zim Wiki. He's borrowing my phone at present, because I've been trying to figure out how to fix the PC - the both browsers suddenly stopped connecting, although everything else that connects to the internet still works. Grrr.

Anyway, he just brought the phone over to point out a particular caste of Irkens (Zim's species) called Advisors - who provide input to the leaders, the Almighty Tallest. The type specimen's name is Rarl Kove.

And then I had to explain why it made me laugh.

I love Invader Zim, but still haven't seen all of it yet. Or at least don't have the memory Angus does, to remember all the tiny details...Also, despite the number of times I've watched, I only in the last week recognized the voice of Tallest Purple as that of Kevin MacDonald (formerly of Kids in the Hall). Duh; thought I was better at voices than that.

Finally a Zim fan animation I favorited ages ago at DA, but it still makes me laugh.

Avalon wants to be Gaz for the next costume-appropriate holiday....

Well, we hadn't been to Anime Expo since it was in Long Beach, and they did have a BOGO for kids tickets. So, remembering how well going to listen to Green Day worked out, we parked in Long Beach and took the train up to the Convention Center. Some day I will actually get to some panels, but we always seem to do mostly people watching, and boy there is a lot of it! I will get some pictures posted, but wanted to get this posted for the the 3rd, since we only got back about an hour and a half ago.

Wow. This is a fantastic set of blog posts I've been reading in stages over the past week or so. Today, the author was kind enough to make a post with links to all the connected pieces in one place (oh yeah, that's called a Table Of Contents, right). My brother had asked me for stuff to read to help him understand Angus a bit better, and while I've been meaning to sit down and make up a list, I think this is a great place to start. I would encourage reading even if you don't think you know anyone autistic, because chances are, you do, and you (or even they) don't know it.

http://momnos.blogspot.com/2010/03/toast-to-inclusion-autism-education-in.html
(Series of posts linked to in this post is what you want to read)

Angus is not exactly like Bud; he's a couple of years older and fairly good at talking - although he does use some scripts and echolalia, he's not dependent on them. He's in a regular classroom for subjects he's good at (so far, science, social studies and computer lab), and in core classroom for subjects he's not so good at (language arts and math). He's now in middle school where classes in different periods are arranged like this anyway, so he's actually had a headstart on getting used to that. He's had an aide for four hours a day to keep him on track, but his latest IEP plans for aide time to be faded to about half that. He's not on any medication. However, there are quite a few similarities - he gets anxious and frustrated easily, gets very anxious when he realizes an adult he knows is not in view, does not deal easily with sudden changes -i.e. family changing their minds on what movie they're going to watch. He hums a lot (so do I). Loud environments stress him, although he's getting better at that. He definitely needs the movement breaks; we call it gallumphing and he's done it almost since he started walking; the spinny thing is fun, too (hell, I used to do that when I was a kid). His shoes wear out in front first, because he still tends to walk more on his toes. We have never made a big deal out of his issues, which are fairly mild compared to some; he's just Angus to us and quite frankly we had to have them pointed out to us to realize he had them. However, with people who get impatient with him, maybe this will help. I wish I had been creative enough to come up with something like this. I also wish everyone could have the kinds of teachers Bud's seem to be.

So, brought kitty home Wednesday night, and after some initial mewing during the ride home, I was worried he (yes, we're pretty sure he's a boy) would want to hide for awhile and be scared. Absolutely not. He came out of the carrier and immediately started bouncing all over the place as if he'd always lived here. For the first couple of days we confined him to our bedroom, mainly so he's sure of where his food and litter box are, but now have started letting him out into the front of the house.

I really thought John would be negative about getting another cat, but allergies and all he's first in line to play with him and even woke up early on Saturday because the kitten did. Kitten has a fondness for sleeping right on someone's pillow, which makes it difficult to avoid the occasional face full of fur. I woke once to find him draped around the top of my head. I have a slight cat allergy myself, and for the first day had very itchy eyes and was taking antihistamines right along with John, but it's getting better now. Hopefully he'll acclimate soon too; he usually does after a couple of weeks exposure.

Avalon will NOT let him alone. We've had to get after her several times for carrying him around constantly and not letting him rest. He actually goes back into the carrier for naps, partly to get away from her. She's like the character with the boneless cat in the Peanuts strip. She was previously doing the same thing to Spot.

I was previously thinking some variation of silver or gray for a name, but his being male shot down the main one I thought of- the mom in El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera; as a superhero, her name is Plata Peligrosa (Dangerous Silver) and she's a little bit crazy. Sounded perfect for a kitten to me and we have a precedent for cartoon names with Stimpy. I suppose the name itself isn't gender specific, but in any case, John didn't want a color and has dubbed him Scooter. I don't know where that came from - I asked him if he really wanted to name him after a Bush aide who went to jail. Eh.

Anyhoo, he's finally met his older brothers. They were hungry and Avalon let them in this morning. Everyone was more intent on breakfast than whether there was someone new around; Stimpy headed right for the bowl of kitten chow and polished it off; then I discovered we were completely out of cat food, so I pulled on my pants and headed to the store at 6 am. When I got back, Scooter (eh...) was still being ignored for the most part, so let's hope the interaction stays on that neutral level. If I know kittens, though, they do manage to ingratiate themselves - although Stimpy's the top cat now and will likely continuing the ignoring bit, he did the same thing himself to Bob, when he was a kitten. ;)

Home from work today, as Gareth's been sick all week, with runsamuck following suit shortly after. Gareth started feeling poorly on Saturday, then on Sunday he had a temperature of 103.4°F. We kept pushing the fluids and ibuprofen, and made him take a tepid shower to cool down. It started coming down later that evening, enough that after he was asleep, John and I went up to Dismalland for about an hour for my birthday. The fever was mostly gone the next day, except for about a degree higher in the evening, but he was still pretty miserable with the cough and aches that remained. We kept him home Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday was a holiday, and we were going to try going back today, but he's still a bit out of it. I figured he was going to need a doctor's note to go back to school anyway, so I took him to get checked out today. After examining him, and listening to his symptoms, the doctor told he probably did have H1N1, but he was on the tail end of it - a lot of kids are getting it but don't seem affected too severely. He still has quite a bit of lung congestion and coughing, and started getting a runny nose today, so he told him to take tomorrow off, too. While that seems to be a free week off school, he's probably going to have a lot of homework to make up on the weekend.

runsamuck has it now too, . Dammit, I really wanted him to get a vaccination, but he didn't ask his doctor about it last time he went in. When I called to make Gareth's appointment, I unintentially got that medical office's H1N1 update, which said they'd ordered 2500 vaccinations, but only received 100 so far. Those were given to high risk patients and are all gone already. He can't get one now being ill. So if that's what he has, should he bother now? Apparently, they're not testing for it, they're just assuming everthing is. Anyway, John's weird - he always acts like he has a fever - constant alternating chills/burning up - but he only rarely has a temperature. And every time he's sick he starts having nightmares.

Angus is ok; Avalon has the sniffles but no fever, she might be staying home tomorrow, too. As for myself, I had a bit of a tickly throat and dry cough earlier in the week (I didn't really feel sick, but I did try to be careful to wash hands often and smother any coughs on a closed mouth), but it seems to have gone now. I dunno, can one virus affect everyone in different ways like this? If you've had one, but you don't know for sure which one it was, should you still get the other or both?

I asked Dad to check with his doctor before he catches something - has he yet? No. Gonna have to keep bugging him.

Somewhat related - Ran across this blog post today; silly person is trying to blame his athlete's foot on getting a flu vaccine. Idiot.

Petting a California rosy boa at Community Science Night. Orange Coast College puts on this event every year - kids also get to climb on some old planes in the Aviation Technology dept., turn cranks and watch tops being turned in a programmable lathe in the machine shop, drive remote control robots, look at a smoker's lung, look behind the scenes in the aquariums, and smell scented plants in the horticulture department. They have a blast and get interested in science at the same time.

Science Night
Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa CA
Canon EOS 1000D
16 October 2009

Webmistress
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
26 Spetember 2009

Angus watching a spider building her evening web - the bottom strands were anchored to this park bench, and the upper part of the web was in the overhanging tree 10-15 feet up. Shortly after this, a couple of families nearby stopped to talk and one of their younger boys came over to watch the spider as well. He told Angus his father had sprayed some spiders in their garage, and Angus got a little offended, shaking his finger and telling him a bit loudly (volume control is something we have to remind him about fairly often) that spiders shouldn't be killed. I stopped him and was telling him speak more calmly when the kid's dad called his son back to him by saying loud enough to be heard by us that Angus was "creeping him out." I went over and explained that Angus gets a little pedantic about things he feels strongly about, but he just has a different way of speaking and the dad kind of went, "Oh, ok," but it got my hackles up a bit (although I suppose the other parent's were too). I was standing right there; did he think Angus was going to do something to his child or that I would have allowed it? No such thing would have ever occured to Angus in any case - his little sister picks on him and he never thinks to fight back.