Small Thoughts for Small Minds

It’s been awhile since I’ve provided an update on how our resident stroke victim has been doing.

First, the "interesting" bit…

Last Tuesday, while making a bathroom run, she tangled her feet in the bathroom throw rug and fell. After a few days of saying she was okay (but complaining about pain) we finally dragged her to the emergency room. (She’s terrified of leaving the house…)

Turned out that she had a hairline fracture of her upper humerus. Since the fracture is so close to the shoulder, a cast wouldn’t work so well. As such, she’s got her arm in a sling. Of course, since it is her right arm (her stroke-affected arm), she held it immobile anyway. Not much functional difference…

When she was at Carrington Place, she was always excited to see visitors, especially the kids. She kept telling us that she was getting better and she would be able to come home soon.

Once it was time to come home, she was very scared. She said she wasn’t better yet.

At home, any time we asked her if she wanted to go out, she’d get scared and say that she wasn’t ready - that she’d do it when she was better.

We told her that this might be as good as she was going to get, so she should enjoy life as best as she could. Perhaps we were too convincing. She seems to have given up.

Whereas, once upon a time, the kids playing in front of her would fill her with joy, now she just worries that they’ll hurt themselves or break something. She’d rather not look at pictures of our trips, which she once loved to do.

Even at Christmas, she showed no enthusiasm for her gifts or for watching the kids open their gifts:

Like Kel, Karen & Jerry, the caregiver (Monday - Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.) will usually make her walk to the bathroom and to the dining room. (Although Nana complains…)

Outside of bathroom trips and meals (and an occasional bath), Nana never leaves her chair in the sunroom. She doesn’t care what is on the television. Sometimes Kel will put a movie on, some type of movie like they used to watch together. No interest. Her only interests are going to the bathroom, getting her shots (insulin), meal time (although she has no comment on the actual food) and bed time.

Every now and again, we can see a spark of her old mischievous self. Maybe a smart aleck comment or a smile at a joke. Rare though.

She is self-conscious of her inability to say the words that she wants to say. I think that has really caused her to withdraw. Although, she can speak pretty clearly when irritated - but if she stops to think about what she is saying then she usually gets it wrong. Since her world has contracted so much, it is pretty easy to know that, when she tells us, "I need, can have, my fish", she means she wants her blanket. Or if she says, "The wall, I mean, please house!", means she wants us to turn on the light…

Bottom line? She’s given up on life and is just waiting to die. I sometimes wonder if she’d be happier in a home without the pressure (self-inflicted) to be her old self.

Pop is getting worse as well. His dementia is gradually increasing. His health seems pretty stable - no recent heart, prostate or other problems of the past, although he does seem weaker. After Nana’s fall, he was told that he shouldn’t walk her to the bathroom. I think that’s a bad idea - helping her out (walking her to the bathroom, getting her a drink, getting her blanket, etc.) is about all he can handle anymore. (He does still put away the dishes from the dishwasher in the morning, although I’d rather he didn’t. When it comes time for me to cook dinner, I have problems finding stuff… Plus, he sometimes puts away stuff that has not yet been washed and I have to go through all the cabinets looking for rinsed-but-not-washed dishes. And hoping that I got all of them…)

I’ve been told to stop buying ice cream - Keira and Haley are upset, but Pop eats too much and apparently it leads to diarrhea (and he is too proud to wear his Depends) which leads to major messes…

He hasn’t had (many? any?) rage episodes recently, which is a relief. I guess I’m safe from his killer angels for the time being…

If I’ve gotten any of this wrong, hopefully Kel or Jerry can comment with the correct info…

The following set of pictures were taken last May. I’ve been to Sweden once since then and am going yet again in mid-May this year. Thought it might be a good idea to post the pix before I lap myself again…

(As always, please click on the picture to see a larger version.)

Because of flight pricing, I ended up flying back on a Sunday, so I spent Saturday afternoon wandering about Stockholm. Here are some things that caught my eye…

Stockholm was built on fourteen islands in Lake Mälaren. Some of them are no longer completely surrounded by water due to city growth.

The L.O. (Landsorganisationen i Sverige - the Swedish Trade Union Confederation) building.

Petruskyrkan (St. Peter’s Church).

Carl Eldh’s statue of August Strindberg in Tegnérlunden park.

Still in in Tegnérlunden park…

An interesting pair of statues…

The sumo boogie?

The Rådhuset (courthouse) on Kungsholmen island.

A statue in the gardens of Piperska Muren, across the street from the Rådhuset.

I took a bunch of pictures of these nice flowers growing on a tree on the grounds of the Landstingshuset (City Council House) in Kungsholmen. I wasn’t happy with any of them, but each of the following three have features that I like, so you get three for the price of one…

I’ve been struggling to identify these flowers. Seems to be similar to pears or plums, but the first picture, showing the immature fruit, doesn’t seem to fit anything…

I posted on the UBC Botanical Garden forum asking for help. One poster replied, "I think a big part of the problem is that the inflorescence in the [first] shot is diseased and monstrous."

Well, huh. That could make it tough…

I like the composition of this picture (with the sky and the Landstingshuset in the background), despite the varying depth of focus on the flowers themselves…

I like the light shining through the petals on this shot…

A coot (NO! not my father-in-law, a Eurasian coot, AKA Fulica atra) enjoying Lake Mälaren.

Stadshuset (Stockholm City Hall)…

The other end of the Stadshuset.

Statue of Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson at Stadshuset.

Looking toward the Västerbron (the Western Bridge) from the Stadshuset.

Ahh, a rakish bit of ivy is all the fashion today…

Another statue by Carl Eldh. This is the female half of a pair of statues on the waterfront at the Stadshuset. I believe they are called "Sangen og Dansen" (Song and Dance). The gal is "Dance".

I didn’t actually make it into the Stadshuset, but I kinda looked into one of the courtyards…

The portion of Gamla Stan (old city) on the tiny island of Riddarholmen.

The cenotaph (empty tomb) originally intended for Birger Jarl’s remains.

Another shot of Södermalm.

Since I’m in the business of moving containers around the world, I’m always interested to see a new use for an old container. In this case, a covered bridge…

A statue of Axel Gustafsson Oxenstierna in front of the Riddarhuset (Swedish House of Nobility). (While the statue is located in the garden of the Riddarhuset, the building in the background of the photo is the Gamla Riksarkivet (Old National Archives), across the canal on Riddarholmen.)

Riddarholmskyrkan (Riddarholmen Church) which so (nicely) dominates the Riddarholmen and Gamla Stan skyline…

The sun sets over Ridderholmen, Gamla Stan and Centralbron (Central Bridge), taken from Södermalm.

Guardian kitteh thinks, "Job well done."

And, hopefully, y’all think so as well. (About this post)

I was in Killarney, Ireland, for a couple of days last September. (Satellite view - sorry they don’t have high resolution.)

(Note: as usual, all pix are hot-linked to larger versions - just click!)

I didn’t have much time to look around and the weather didn’t cooperate. Hans, my Swedish colleague, and I walked around the town of Killarney both nights, but it was after dark and not conducive to photography.

It was a business trip, of course. Here I am in front of a section of a container crane ready for transportation to the coast. Given the width of the typical roads in the area, I wasn’t surprised to hear that they drive in the middle of the night with the police cordoning off the road…

After we did our customer presentation, we went immediately across the street to the Killarney Golf & Fishing Club (two of Hans’ passions) for a bit of a walk and some pictures.

Beautiful grounds…

This is a three-picture panoramic shot (so click on it to see all the detail), showing Lough Leane (Lower Lake, AKA Muckross Lake). Most of the land across the lake is part of the Killarney National Park (the wikipedia entry and another "home" page). The Killarney National Park is home of the only wild herd of the Red Deer (Cervus elaphus) in Ireland. While there are other types of deer currently in Ireland, the red deer are the only "natives". We saw some wandering not too far from town but the light was no good for pix…

This is my pensive pose…

It is clear which country generates a majority of their tourist dollars…

Dunno what type of tree this is. They had quite a few and I really liked them…

The next day, I had to take a noon flight to London. I had a little bit of time between sunrise and when I had to leave for the drive to the Cork airport. To maximize my tiny bit of sightseeing, I picked two places that were close together (and on the right side of Killarney).

First stop, the Torc Waterfall. This is the Owengarriff River flowing between the falls and the lake.

Here’s the main attraction. Not a big waterfall, but quite nice. I wish that I had time to hike around the trails…

On the way back to the car, I spotted this Helvella crispa (AKA White Saddle mushroom).

This old rock wall really does a nice job of pointing out the amount of rainfall they get in Killarney…

My next stop was Muckross House (a couple of other links: here and here). I only had about 20 minutes, so I walked quickly around the grounds and snapped a few pix. Luckily it had stopped raining during that time…

A lovely evergreen…

I wouldn’t mind terribly if this was the view from my backyard…

All these nice big windows face the view in the previous picture…

A seriously big oak…

One day, hopefully, we’ll take the kids and spend some time seeing all the sights…

Some tentative identifications for a few pix in my Santos (Brazil) post…

These are looks like Cycas circinalis (AKA queen sago, false sago palm) which is, in fact, a cycad - not a palm. I’d be more confident if it wasn’t native to India (?). There are a lot of cycads indigenous to Brazil, but since it is used in landscaping, all bets are off…

This is probably a variant of Cleome spinosa, AKA spiny spider flower. Although it is possible that it is Cleome hassleriana which is native to southern South America. There are so many variants that it is hard to get closer…

Now I can back off of my obsessing…

During dinner, Haley was talking about someone she knew that got in trouble for drugs. The conversation jumped all over the place, including a brief discussion about legality and enforcement in Amsterdam. After quite a bit in that vein, Dyson piped in asking why we were talking about dancing hamsters. We were a bit confused until he said, "You know, the hamsterdance."

Ahh, gotcha buddy…

It’s all about context.

Especially since he was familiar with something actually called the Hamster Dance. (Which I wasn’t until just now…) Here’s the version of it he likes…

Unfortunately, now it’s probably stuck in my head…

Or, in Portuguese, cidade de Santos.

(Note: all pictures are hot-linked to a full-sized version.)

I spent a couple of days in Santos, Brazil, in early February. (Satellite view)

Getting there was a bit of a hassle. Originally, I was scheduled to go straight (via Atlanta) to São Paulo, but I had to reschedule to go to a meeting in Freeport (Bahamas) "on the way". (Meeting got canceled, but the change fees were more than the hotel in Freeport, so I went anyway.) If I had set up the schedule to include Freeport from the beginning, I would’ve flown via Miami to São Paulo. Instead, to work within the framework of the original trip, I went from Freeport to Atlanta. Only one (Delta) flight a day from Freeport to Atlanta, so I ended up spending 5+ hours in Atlanta while waiting for my 10 hour flight to Brazil. While we crossing the Caribbean (I think we were over Aruba or nearby), the plane had to turn around an make an emergency landing in San Juan (Puerto Rico). (I found out later that a woman, five months pregnant, was having complications. No word on her status, though.) Ended up adding three hours to the flight. Then an hour waiting on the bus at the São Paulo airport, followed by a two hour bus trip to Santos. Very long two days…

When I finally arrived at the hotel, I made dinner arrangements with my friend (and hopefully customer) Marcelo. (I met Marcelo at the conference in Panama just before Thanksgiving - we instantly bonded over beer. He’s a big fan of Belgian beers as well as American micros.)

I stayed at the Parque Balneário Hotel, which is supposed to be the best hotel in Santos. Its price tag was appropriate for that designation, but it’s definitely seen better days - the rooms were quite run down. Disappointing…

Between check-in and dinner, I had about three hours. I knew better than to follow my body’s recommendation to take a nap, so I went for a walk.

Even though it was the peak of summer, the weather was quite cool. (Clouds and strong winds didn’t help in that regard!)

The beach in Santos is quite wide and quite long. Apparently a popular spot when the weather cooperates. The water is not clear at all, so I didn’t even try snorkeling (although I did bring my stuff - no luck in either Freeport or Santos. Sigh).

Apparently the park/garden between between the beach and the road (and then the city) is the largest in the world. (More - in Portuguese)

Note the tiny white dots between the water and the land (Guarujá) on the right side of the photo. Sail boats out for a bit of a race, I guess…

A two-picture panorama of the beach looking toward the west, in the direction of São Vicente (which isn’t visible - the buildings in the distance are the town of Itararé).

A flower cultivated in the beach garden. I can’t find any identification. So sorry…

This palm, also in the beach garden, caught my eye. No ID for this either…

Some baby fronds on a different type of palm. (Also, look at the old-rock-wall texture of the trunk with its variety of other plants hitchin’ a ride.)

Finally, an identification in which I have some confidence. I believe this to be a flower of the Passiflora edulis (AKA Passion fruit) plant. Growing wild among the rocks near the beach on this prominence ("Pier dos Surfistas", which, at a certain angle, with a certain lack of decorum, could be viewed as somewhat suggestive…)

This island (Ilha Urubuqueçaba) had an almost Disney-like quality about it - like a fake version of a what a tropical island should look like…

I obsessed over it and took dozens of pictures. This is the best, which doesn’t say much for my skills, but I still like it…

There wasn’t always a lot of space between the cliffs and the beach, but (by god!) they weren’t going to let any space go to waste!

I believe this is called Pedra da Feiticeira (Rock of the Witch). Huh…

Another view…

An egret looking for some munchies…

I saw this cable car ride (Teleférico do Itararé) to the hill top and thought, how can I pass it up? (This picture didn’t resize well. Click on it if you want a better view…)

This is all that was supporting my fat ass…

If everything looks a bit skewed, it is…

The "cars" really swayed back and forth, so it was difficult to get a level photo. This picture, despite the drunken angle, does show nicely the path through the tree tops…

Yes, the focus on this picture stinks. Motion and lack of light. Sorry.

Anyway, you can still see the rough stairway below the tram line. (The rope you see is the hand rail for the stairs.) I would’ve liked to hike that path…

Another stinky picture, but it does show the brightly blooming trees that were visible throughout the surrounding mountains. Really lovely…

Cranes in the mist…

(This container terminal wouldn’t even let me visit. Sigh…)

A three picture panorama from the hill top (sorry, Itararé Mountain)…

Coming back down, looking at the Itararé beach…

By the time I got to the bottom, it was raining pretty steadily. Of course, I couldn’t get a cab, so I had to walk through the rain for about two miles back to the hotel. I barely made it in time to clean up and change before going out to dinner.

Here is Marcelo holding up a glass of Red Ale Especial (pretty much a barleywine at 9.5% alcohol) from Cervejaria Baden Baden:

We had a wonderful meal - Brazilian-style barbeque (churrascaria) with entirely too much Red Ale Especial…

After we concluded real business the next day, I took another walk. And a third walk on Friday. I probably walked a total of 20 miles over three days… (I did get a lot of real work done as well. Really…)

This time I took special note of the older buildings (as pointed out to me by Marcelo). They were apparently built on insufficient pilings and the sand underfoot has shifted. This doesn’t necessarily show up well in the picture, since all pictures of tall buildings come together at the top due to perspective. But this is REALLY how bad these particular buildings were. (I tried to take the picture from as far away as possible, the waterside,  to reduce the effects of the perspective.)

Some of the buildings are so bad, Barley could play with her tennis balls all by herself - drop them on one side of the room and chase them to the other side…

An old (1584) fort called Fortaleza de Santo Amaro da Barra Grande. (I think the small island it is on is called Santo Amaro.) I thought about taking the ferry across the water, but couldn’t get sufficiently motivated. (Apparently it is a museum.)

And to finish it off with a cheesy note…

If you’re going to take on PMS, you’ll need multiple saints…

This post was exhausting. So much research - and it’s difficult to find English language information on Santos. I ended up looking through Portuguese language websites and using AltaVista’s Babel Fish to translate the bits that looked relevent…

(And I still don’t have ID for some of the plants. Sigh…)

Hopefully someone enjoys it…

My previous post was about the beach and such in Manzanillo, Mexico.

Of course, the reason that I was there was to visit the local container port.

I just stumbled across this picture that Fredrik (our global sales manager) took:

Of course, just because I was AT work doesn’t mean I was actually working…

Manzanillo, Mexico, to be precise. (Click here for satellite view.)

After the conference in Panama, and before the visit to Hong Kong, Fredrik (our global sales manager - from Sweden) and I visited an "old friend" (and potential customer) in Manzanillo. (This was just a few days before the family gathered in Hawai’i for Thanksgiving.)

The customer reserved rooms for us at the Camino Real Hotel. A bit more of a vacation resort than a business hotel, but I wasn’t complaining (the "rooms" were like apartments, each with a full kitchen, two bedrooms, two baths, and a living/dining room…)

Looking out toward the ocean from the lobby…

Looking inland. (A "panorama" picture - two pix stitched together. Click on the picture to see it in its true glory…)

Looking out the sliding door to my balcony, through the acid-etched hotel logo. (Pretending to be "arty". I know… don’t quit my day job…)

Between the meetings with the customer in the morning/early afternoon and dinner with the customer in the evening, I took about an hour to walk up and down the beach.

This gentleman was using a net to fish in the fresh-water river flowing into the ocean.

Unknown type of flower. Perhaps Mimosa pudica (AKA sensitive plant) or closely related plant (apparently there are a LOT of varieties of mimosa…) If I had any suspicion of the ID at the time, I could’ve tried to see if the leaves closed at the touch, but…

Near where the river flowed into the sea were some rough rocks. Good place to look for critters… (I like this picture - click on it to see the detail…) (Or don’t…)

This anemone was exposed to the air every time the waves receded. Seems risky for a sea critter…

I wish I could get more identification, but I can’t. Fail. (I DO like the picture, though, even if the focus is less than perfect. You wouldn’t believe how many times I tried to take this picture. I made the camera focus on my foot at approximately the same distance as the anemone in a weak attempt to force the auto-focus to get the right focal depth. Process: foot on the nearby rock - click halfway to get focus - turn slightly to frame the anemone - wait for waves to cooperate - get splashed and pull camera away to avoid getting soaked - start over…)

Being paper thin helps when you’re trying to squeeze into a crack in the rock to hide from some big dude with a camera trying get a close-up…

Seems to be a Grapsus grapsus (AKA Sally lightfoot crab), maybe a juvenile (the adults are more brightly colored?) I can’t find any good identification websites. Can’t even determine if this type of crab is even found on the Pacific coast of Mexico…

Some of the pictures of the Grapsus tenuicrustatus (AKA Natal lightfoot crab) seem to match, but it doesn’t seem to live in the Americas at all…

I’m sure it is in the grapsus genus…

Another one - equally unsure of my intentions…

Apparently the guy fishing in the river didn’t have much luck and he decided to cast his net in the salty bit…

Extreme closeup! Depth of field with NO part of the moth truly in focus! Dang this auto-focus crap…

I tried to finagle a trip back to Manzanillo next week (I’ll be in Houston and it is a direct flight). I would like to get more information on the existing cranes (I didn’t have enough time crawling around during the above visit), but the customer thought it was a bit premature.

Too bad - I’d love to see if there is a good snorkeling spot or two nearby…

More miscellany…

For some unknown reason, Haley and Keira decided to convert the stairs into a slide. Using blankets, pillows and a lack of good sense, here we are!

(The girls insisted that I document their insanity…)

Haley got lucky with the placement of the pillow. Unbeknownst to me as I was snapping the picture, while sliding down the not-so-slippery slope, she almost completely lost her pajama bottoms…

Keira laments her nearly straight hair. One night she marched into the basement TV room and demanded that I braid her hair (while it was still damp so it would be wavy in the morning when she took out the braids).

Not a single "thank you", by the way…

I was in London for a couple of days in December. I took a LOT of pictures of different cask ales (provocatively posing by their pull handles…) but very few other pictures. Of course, I still have a LOT of pictures from my previous trip to London in September that I haven’t bothered to post…

I have no idea what the back story (if any) is on this building. Just caught my eye as I was walking back to the hotel…

This is the Natural History Museum.

I had an overnight flight to London (as is typical in that direction). I got to the hotel at 10 a.m. (London time, of course). Naturally, I couldn’t check in until around 2 p.m. I left my bags with the bell captain and took a walk. (Exhausted since, as usual, I barely slept on the flight over. Coach seats are NOT conducive to relaxation…)

Just a couple of blocks from the hotel I found the Natural History Museum. It is pretty impressive - both the structure and the displays. I spent a couple hours there, mostly looking at the dinosaur exhibits. Dyson would’ve been TOTALLY pumped…

A view of the Tower of London from the train (on the way back from a dinner with a customer in Essex)…

Jerry and Karen came down to the dungeon to watch the Steelers/Jaguars playoff game (5 January - wild card weekend). Karen, being a native Pittsburgher proudly displays her Terrible Towel.

Note: the guy who came up the the Terrible Towel, Myron Cope (infamous broadcaster for the Steelers and sports writer), died just a couple of weeks ago. In an interview after he retired in 2005, Myron Cope said:

"I’ve often thought that, when I kick the bucket, there’d be a story that said, ‘Creator of towel, dead.’ I would like to be remembered as a pretty decent writer.'’

As for the chip clip on Karen’s bangs… well… umm… Nope. I just can’t explain that one…

For some reason, Keira wanted to pose with the stuffed animals she got for Christmas. (This was not long after New Years - after Kel & Donna stripped the tree of ornamentation and before my lazy butt dragged the tree to the roadside for removal…)

Of course, monkey-see monkey-do…

I somehow managed to copy this picture into the wrong folder on my hard drive when I was putting together the post with the turtle pix from Hawai’i. This turtle was quite memorable because of the polyps growing around the point were its flippers emerged from its shell. Both front and back flippers…

Whew! A lot of posts the past couple days… Let’s see if I can keep up the momentum…

Keira’s been taking horse riding lessons for several months. Recently, Dyson decided that he needed to be just like his big sister.

So, on the 5th of January, Dyson went for his first lesson.

Keira and Kel get all the credit/blame for the pictures. Since I’m a pitiful father, I didn’t even go along for this milestone…

As you can tell by his expression, he’s questioning of the wisdom of his decision…

I’m sure he’s thinking something like, "Little boy. Big horse. Hmmm…"

That typical nervous laugh/grimace (usually accompanied by talking in a strained, high-pitched voice)…

In action…

Keira used my camera to shoot a couple of videos. I don’t have any software for video editing, so you get to see the unedited "raw" footage…

Also, it doesn’t seem to be possible to embed the YouTube videos into this blog format. Poop. So click on the links below to see the clips…

Here’s the first video and the second video.