5 in 5 - Fox, Snow, Health

It's a beautiful day today, blue sky with no clouds in sight, and warming up through 45 degrees. I just watched a fox wander across our neighbor's back yard and into ours, disappearing onto the patio under our deck. They're such beautiful wild animals. Speaking of the wild, however, the news article about a mountain lion attack in California on Thursday was unsettling. It happened not far from where Otamay lives, and Mikele is visiting right now. I hope they're being careful to keep their eyes open when they're out walking. Probably they wouldn't have a problem, since between them they have four dogs that would scare most anything away.

I posted some new neighborhood snow pics from two weekends ago at http://picasaweb.google.com/shushing3/0114Snow

I guess I've fallen off the riding/walking exercise wagon, after all these weekend snowfalls. I still do my stretching and minimal exercises in the mornings, but I've let the inconvenience of walking through snow, slush, and ice in subfreezing temperatures and gusty winds, keep me from my appointed rounds for the past several weekends. We've had five weekends in a row of significant snow, and just about all that time it's been below freezing. I was glad to have the new snowblower last Sunday, after the forecast 1-2 inches of snow accumulation turned into an actual 9-12 inches. This snowy weather pattern is very unusual for here. And there's more snow forecast for tomorrow, and then again later in the week. Yikes! It must be Winter! Global warming... bah, humbug!

Work's been busy - supporting our existing software installations, talking to our new partners, and starting some new projects. I'm finally getting to work/play with some Linux systems, although we're on a pretty tight schedule, so it's not the relaxed kind of playing we all yearn for. I won't say this is a new lesson, but I've quickly relearned the old "unix is not unix" lesson with regards to Linux. Red Hat and SUSE present quite different interfaces to the system admin. I hope our developers won't see as much difference between them, or we'll never get done in time.

K's been dizzy, nauseous, and out of breath a lot, the past few weeks. Her pulse has been low - in the 40s - and BP has been high. It's probably due to a medication switch, but the symptoms are real and troubling, even if the cause might be known. The cardiology office just called to offer her an earlier appointment, which she accepted.

Dad says Adele's surgery went well yesterday. It was bigger than they thought, so they couldn't do the arthroscopic approach. They say she'll be recovering in the hospital for five days. Here's the info for the hospital:

  Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

  1275 York Avenue

  New York, NY 10021

  212-639-2000

Also see http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/5365.cfm

And that's all for now, folks...
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