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This past weekend was the annual family reunion up at Suttle Lake, and since it's the one time of the year that we actually have to go camping, we packed up the gear and off we went.

The weather sucked, though. It was windy—really windy, tent-flattening wind (other people's tents; ours was well-shielded by trees)—all day Friday and Saturday. Saturday afternoon the clouds rolled in and sure enough, it began to rain that night around 11pm. Kind of a constant drizzle throughout the night, nothing like the downpour we had in 2004, but enough to leave everything outside wet. Inside the tent was fine and dry, fortunately. Breaking camp and putting stuff away was no fun.

I need to pay more attention to Suttle Lake and its environs more, though. I was looking at it in Google Earth and noticed that there are 3 other lakes just down the road(s): Blue Lake, Scout Lake, and Dark Lake. (Here's the respective Google Maps page.) How have I never noticed those or checked those out before?

On this day...

• Hanukkah ends at sundown
• Festivus is "traditionally" celebrated
• The Night Before Christmas was first published, in 1823
• Eddie Vedder was born in 1964
• The Emperor of Japan Akihito was born in 1933
• Van Gogh cut off his ear in 1888
• A whole bunch of other stuff happened

...and oh yeah, it's my birthday. I'm 34 today.

The "illness" referred to in the title above is our daughter's; she isn't seriously sick but has this cough that really kicks in after she's been asleep for a few hours, and this happens two or three times a night. It really sucks to have your sleep punctured every couple of hours to go administer meds or water or whatever.

Anyway. It was also our daughter's birthday weekend, so we were running around a lot getting things ready and such. The birthday party went really well, so that's good. Thankfully they seem to get easier as the kids get older and more autonomous. No need to give the little ones booze and sleep it off anymore.

I'm kidding. (Or am I?)

The only hitch was two kids didn't get picked up; turns out the mom who was supposed to be picking them up went to the wrong place. Fortunately, we had our minivan and cellphones, so we were able to take the extra kids to where they needed to be. That may well have been the first time we've carpooled...

Anyway, I'll try to get back to my regular blogging schedule. Which hasn't been very "regular" of late, I know. I'll get right on that... sometime...

Friday, after much hand-wringing and debating and questioning sanity (almost entirely by my wife), we adopted a new kitten from the Humane Society.

He's about seven weeks old and has that full-on kitten rambunctious flexibility that all the good kittens possess. Kittens like that are like crack for some people.

Thankfully the first night was the only night (for me) that messed up my sleep... seems like the last cat we got kept me up a lot more at first. I'm not complaining!

So far, the other two cats are still unsure of what to make of the interloper. I'm sure that will pass and they'll start kicking his ass any day now.

And now, of course, the obligatory kitten pictures.

I haven't decided yet if that black on the nose qualifies this cat to look like Hitler...

One year and two weeks after we lost our first cat, we lost our second cat today. We had to have him put to sleep, the same as before; he was essentially end-stage advanced urinary tract disease. We'd spent the last two weeks doing everything we could for him.

This was our cat Lucifer. He was 13. We'd also raised him from a kitten. He was a big Maine coon, with six toes on each of his front paws; he looked like he was wearing mittens. He was also the sweetest cat you would ever meet.

Yes, it sucks. It's like that, sometimes. But at 13, he lived a full, happy, loving life with no complaints; there's not much more you can ask for.

Yeah, that headline there? Totally saccharine and goofy and pointless. Yes, I know it's cribbed from John Lennon, so what?

Anyway.

The "life that happened" was a sudden and unexpected gall bladder removal for my wife last week. Yeah, I know—Wha?!? She went to the doctor on Wednesday, confirmed that she had gallstones, and they wanted to take the gall bladder out either that night or Thursday. We opted for Thursday, so I spent most of that day at the hospital and the rest of the weekend taking care of, er, everything. So I've been busy.

You know what's crazy? They treat gall bladder surgery (formally known as cholecystectomy, in this case laparoscopic) as basically outpatient; my wife was able to come home Thursday night.

Okay, this is even crazier, and creepy (from that Wikipedia article):

Gallstones are, oddly, a valuable by-product of meat processing, fetching up to $900 US an ounce in their use as a purported aphrodisiac in the herbal medicine of some cultures. The finest gallstones tend to be sourced from old dairy cows. Much as in the manner of diamond mines, slaughterhouses carefully scrutinise offal department workers for gallstone theft.

Wow. And "ew."

On the other hand... no, I won't even go there.

The eye surgery went very well, our daughter has been recuperating marvelously all weekend (it wasn't a very eventful weekend because of this), and things are more-or-less back on track.

Saturday morning we did make a Costco run, largely because I had an eye exam of my own at the optometrist there. It's been probably 15 years since I last had my eyes checked, and the kids having the surgery—not to mention having had eye floaters for years—put me in mind to getting it done. As it happens, I have nearly perfect vision; I see 20/20 in each eye, and have a very mild astigmatism that may necessitate getting glasses in a few years. The floaters are normal.

And yeah, go ahead and get the "floater" jokes out of your system; I can hear a bunch of you snickering in the back.

Like the trip we had almost two years ago, tonight we're in the Phoenix Inn hotel in Lake Oswego in preparation for our daughter's corrective eye surgery tomorrow. Pretty much anything I would say is covered in that previous post; the only details being different really are that my daughter is six and it's her third (and hopefully last) such surgery. And I've taken today, Wednesday and Thursday off from work for it (back on Friday).

On the positive side, we had a really excellent dinner at Piazza Italia in Portland's Pearl District; we got to try some cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory at Washington Square; and we'll be doing a Trader Joe's run sometime before coming back on Thursday. Anyone need anything from TJs?

No, I haven't posted much on any of my sites this week. My aunt died on Monday, and I just haven't felt like writing much. There's really not any more to say; the funeral is on Saturday. In the meantime, I hope everyone's having a good week, what with the first day of summer and the hot weather and all.

All this week (since Saturday, actually) it's just me and my son at home. My wife and daughter took advantage of spring break to head down to San Diego to visit my brother and sister-in-law. Sadly, spring break doesn't cover work or preschool/daycare, so we were left behind.

It's all good. We're having a good time so far, despite the logistics of being a single parent for a week. No big plans, otherwise, though.

My daughter, who's five, has been learning addition of late. She knows a lot of the single-digit addition, like one plus two, three plus three, like that, but what's funny is that instead of saying, "One plus two equals three," she tends to say, "Plus one plus two equals three." It's that extra "plus" that prefaces the statement that totally makes me think she's doing math via Polish notation.

I know, only a computer geek would get that.