Cat progress?

I just had to take a minute away from writing to let you all know something really cute and hopeful that happened this morning.

I was eating breakfast on the couch as usual, and Natasha climbed up and settled into my crossed legs for a snuggle as usual ... everything was pretty typical, including Naski's sniffing and investigation into this mom-sister cuddling event that usually elicits growls and snarls from Tasha. This morning she was more tolerant, so Naski jumped up onto the couch too. Still no hiss (hooray!). Naski approached from Tasha's behind, which is usually a disaster, BUT. She either didn't notice him or didn't care. This is not atypical - most times we get to this stage, it's 'cause Tasha didn't notice or was sleepy enough to block him from her consciousness. And then she hears the tinkling of his nametag on his collar and she turns and whines and hisses and swats (if required) and looks at me as if to say "mom, WTF?! Take care of this shit!" (if required).

So today there was adorable, I-can't-believe-no-one-else-is-witnessing-this kind of progress. Naski jumped up, approached, and with only minimal whining from Tasha, started grooming her whole head. He licked the top of her head, her ears, her neck ... for a good 10 minutes. I know this is something that kittens will do to one another or momma cats will do to their babies, but I was totally agog that a) Naski was a sweet enough boy to make the gesture and b) that Natasha didn't run away at first lick. My heart was truly pounding the entire time and I wanted to shout from the rafters. Lord knows when the "perfect storm" might happen again, but I take this as a sign of things to come in our house. We do seems to take about 1.9876 steps back for every 2 forward with these two, but ... I guess with enough time, anything can be achieved!! *cartoonishly big grins*

No pictures from this event, since my lap was center stage and I was home alone. I barely breathed lest I disrupt the peaceful event! You'll just have to use your imagination.

0.0124 steps closer .........

A new format

For those of you who actually check this blog at its physical address (instead of through an RSS reader or feed), you may have noticed that I recently changed the format. I started experimenting with it this weekend, trying out some interesting new third-party format codes which ultimately were not user-friendly enough for un-tech-savvy Erin. I finally made some tweaks to a template provided by blogger (blogspot), adding in one of my favorite pics from Big Sur in the header and changing the colors around a bit.

After seeing some of my friends' blogs in wordpress's format (wordpress is another blog hosting site, like blogspot), I was starting to get annoyed by the narrow text field blogger provides. I wanted to be able to post larger pics (so that you don't need to click on them just to see some detail) and have a wider text field so that each post didn't require arthritis-inducing scrolling. This new format is mostly a test, and I may be changing the header pic around in the next few weeks. Unfortunately, this does mean that all of the old posts will look weirdly off-center because of the (relatively) smaller picture sizing. But whatever. I'm sure you'll all deal with it. =)

Things here at the Krakhouse are busy and crazy - I'm into full thesis-writing mode, and I have my home office set up with improvised file drawers for my multitudes of papers (with my bizarre but effective numbering system), all of my binders full of data collected over the last 5 years, and the computer that I hope will never crash, burn, or otherwise fail me in this sprint marathon of writing. I'm trying to sort out a date for the defense, but I'm still hoping for the end of June. Nick is doing a lot of flying lately, trying to finish his requirements for a private pilot's license before we leave San Diego. We're also becoming acutely aware of the impending move to Ohio! So if we're off the radar ... well, I promise we have a good excuse!

I'm not Josh-in'!

Ba-dum-dum (someone tap the cymbal behind me). I know, I know, but it's better that the first name game come from his favorite auntie, right?! Wait, you mean I'm his ONLY auntie? Hm. Whatever. Favorite. 'Cause I said so.

Nick's brother Chris and his beautiful wife Kate came out last weekend for a few days. It was the first time I've met my nephew Josh, who turned 7 months old just a day after they left. Nick got the chance to spend a few days with them right before Christmas, but this was my first time with the little man. Needless to say, I was koo-koo for cocoapuffs over him, and as soon as the camera was pulled out it didn't get put away until they left.

Josh had a terrible case of RSV a few months back, which included hospital stays and many many sleepless nights for baby and mama. Taking every precaution against re-infection, Josh gets to have a nebulizer treatment each night. The unit was clearly designed for little kids - the mask that goes with it is painted up with an elephant motif in bright colors. Well, elephants may not be Josh's cup o' tea ... the mask was good for chewing

(that's the mask in his hands and mouth, next to the pacifier, painted with an elephant face)
but when it came to the nebulizer, he prefered to gnaw on the hard nozzle end. Hey, the medicine got into his mouth and nose!


We got to spend some nice lazy mornings around the house, and Nick and I both got to play with Josh (and his toys). The early morning light around the house wasn't all that bright, so it really put the f/1.8 on my new lens to the test. These were the moments when I think having the f/1.4 would give a significant advantage for a) handheld shots (I'm too lazy to ever use a tripod) and b) wiggly lil guys like Josh. And I thought the cats had a knack for turning their head just as the shutter released! (Outside in brighter light the f/1.8 was exceptionally fast and very sharp. I've definitely pushed the limits of this lens.)



I love how everything in this picture is moving except for the very middle of his face. Quite a fit!


Kate and Josh playing with his doggie blanket (his favorite!):






The above picture is an example of the shutter speed not being quite fast enough. If this were taken at 1/50 instead of 1/25, it would have been much crisper.

When it comes to lenses, a logical question to ask is "why not just make the smallest f-stop available? Say, 1.0? 0.8? The faster the better, right?" Well here's the rub: The lower the f-stop, the wider the aperture. The wider the aperture, the shallower the depth of field. Translation: when you use a smaller f-stop (say, 1.8 or 1.4) you have such a shallow depth of field that you can end up with a person's eyelashes in focus but not the pupil. Yeah, it's that precise. If your subject is moving, like, say, a wiggly wormy of a baby, then their eyeball goes from being in focus to out of focus in 0.00001 seconds flat. So even when using f/1.8, I adjust my camera so it focuses using just the center point focus (instead of the 9-point autofocus) and I take A LOT of pictures. Few of which end up truly sharp, unless I'm in good lighting (outdoors or a very well-lit room).

In a room with more filtered lighting, like our living room early in the morning, most of the pictures were taken with shutter speeds between 1/15 and 1/50, giving them a slightly gauzy look. Not entirely undesirable, in retrospect.


Of course, it helps when your subject is THIS DARN CUTE.




I'm not a big digital effects kinda gal, but when I tested out some Lightroom presets, this one just seemed to lend itself to these two shots. Kind of an old-timey effect. I LOVE THEM!





Josh liked to roll himself into a taco with small blankets that we put down on the floor for him, so Chris and Kate came up with a viable solution: a much bigger blanket. Which he then used to roll himself into any variety of food-like shapes. Tacos, check. Cinnamon rolls, check. Scrambled eggs:

Check.

Somehow, I almost always managed to get a clean shot when Josh was stuffing things into his mouth. Like any good Sinnokrak, he always takes pause to examine and enjoy potential foodstuffs! Seriously - of the 400-odd pictures that I took during their stay, I got about 100 that were clean enough to use (remember the part about the wiggly 7-month-old?) and at least 20% of those involved Josh's mouth being obscured by his hands plus miscellaneous other objects (pacifier, toys, bottle, etc). A boy after my own heart.







Josh is so alert and aware and was absolutely fascinated by Naski and Natasha. I think, in part, it's because they're about his size. And although Chris and Kate have a mini daschund at home, cats prance about in a manner quite different from a little weiner doggie, so seeing Josh recognize something new and seeing him so intrigued by it was thrilling. The cats, for their part, reacted quite differently than I would have expected. Naski is a total lover with us, but it scared stupid by strangers (like Chris and Kate, or any other adult for that matter). And yet he was utterly curious and exploratory around Josh, especially when Josh was on the floor. Naski would stalk Josh:


And Josh would get Naski in his eyeline and become transfixed (which kind of freaked Naski out a bit, in an "oh my god, HE SAW ME!" sort of way):


A few times, Naski made his approach:


And ultimately, the only thing that made him emboldened enough to get this close was the promise of a new toy. Notice them playing tug-of-war with it:


Watch out, Naski boy ... as he gets bigger, you can expect to win fewer and fewer of these things ...


For everyone out there who thinks you need an SUV to transport children, take note. We fit 4 adults and Josh's car seat into my Prius very comfortably! And since it's a hatchback, I could make smoochy faces at him every time I messed around with stuff in the trunk!




Josh also LOVES peekaboo - he plays it with whatever's around, but especially loves to play it with his doggie blankie.


PEEKABOO!



Okay, so this blog post was not supposed to be about the technical ins-and-outs of my new lens. It was supposed to be about this fantastic weekend that we had with Josh, Chris, and Kate! And we did pack a lot into the weekend. We went to the Midway, where we spent some time up on the flight deck (Josh was strapped to Kate and his fair Lowry-Sinnokrak skin was being protected by a blanket):


Looking across to the Nimitz over at NAS North Island:


Josh woke up for a diaper change just before we popped into the gift shop. Chris plopped this too-large child's cover onto Josh and it made for the most precious photo:


After the Midway, we stopped at Point Loma Seafoods for lunch (mmmm, fresh fish!) and then took Kate out for a quick sail while Chris chilled out with the lil man on the pier. The winds were frisky at first, pushing our 22-ft Catalina over pretty far. These are moments that I call R2D2 moments ... think back to Star Wars and the noise that R2D2 made as he and Luke were zipping through the canyons ... kind of a robotic "WHEOOAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!" That's the noise I make when we're heeled over and it feels like we're perpendicular to the water. We were able to give Kate a few of those moments until the winds died down, causing us to cut our sail short and head back in. I NEVER take the camera out on the water in boats that small, so no pics, sadly.

But. The next day, we went out to the Wild Animal Park! This is truly our favorite place in San Diego. We live 3.5 miles from the zoo and go there a couple time a year, and yet we drive 35 miles to the Wild Animal Park 2-4x as much. It was originally designed as a breeding facility, with huge enclosures that include many (non-predator) species that would co-mingle in the wild. Originally created this way to encourage breeding, it makes for a very Jurassic Park-like atmosphere. You can wander about 1/20th of the acreage of the park on foot, and for the rest you need to take a tram ride. The orignal tram was shut down a year or two back (old, unsustainable, needed so much rennovation it wasn't cost effective) and they have since opened a shorter bus ride that may get a bit closer to the enclosures, but focuses on Africa and entirely skips the Asia enclosures. I'm sure they're working on it ... but we miss seeing those water buffalo and the asian rhinos!! =( If you've followed our blog for a while, you've likely seen a billion pictures from the Animal Park. So here are some people pics:

At Condor Ridge:


Josh, in his first umbrella stroller! (what a big boy!)


It's hard to know what a 7-month-old, particularly one who is in his first upright stroller, is processing about the world around him. Josh seemed awfully entranced by his surroundings but unaware of the animals. On our bus ride around the enclosures, he was more interested in his bottle and groping Nick's arm hair (I really wish I had a picture of THAT) but he still knew what the camera was all about!


We also spent a day around La Jolla:


and Coronado, enjoying the sun.

Nick got to spend some quality time with Josh playing with cat toys. No, you read that correctly. Nick treated his nephew like a cat. This blue ring? It's a cat toy. Nick turned it into a baby toy. Well, he's resourceful. So there's that. If we're ever in a situation where we are living in a carboard shack, at least I know our kids will be entertained. And, really, when you think about it, that's saying something.











Ohhhh, sorry Joshie bug. That was totally Uncle Nick's fault. heh heh.

Here are some good shots from their last day in town:








Wow. I'm sorry, I'm totally biased, but this is too freakin adorable. What wife DOESN'T love seeing their husband get all Babysiter's Club with their brother's/sister's/cousin's/friend's kid? Huh, I just realized that was a throwback reference. Yes, Camille, I grew up in the Babysitter's Club and Sweet Valley High era. We were as cult-esque as one could be before the advent of internet and Twilight. But without the creepy Mormon references.

Anyway. If you're thinking of commenting to this post with some slightly veiled reference to babies and Nick and me ... right now, we're super happy just being Auntie and Uncle Nick! I won't lie to you, faithful blog reader(s), I'm becoming not entirely opposed to the idea of children coexisting with us and our cats. But I'm just trying to get through my thesis committee meeting on Tuesday (the 14th) and the susequent thesis defense (end of June-ish?) and the move to Ohio. Then you can start to nag about babies. Until I give you the look of death, that is! =)

For now, I got my googlie-eyed fix with Josh last weekend. I'm so happy and proud to be little Josh's Aunt Erin. I can't wait to be closer to this wee one (and my other nephew Braydan, who is an incredible 4 1/2 years old, and my soon-t0-be-niece, due in late May!!) starting this fall. I envision awesome Randar-and-Erin tailgate BBQs for Illini games this fall. Oh yeah, I don't actually have time to make this happen, so *snap snap* Randy, Jenni, baby Brace, Mom, Dad, Sinnokraks, Ashley, Alex, Peter, JoAnn ... we need to make this work!! =)

San Diego Visitors

Nick and I have been lucky enough to host two (count 'em, TWO) sets of guests in the last month! Not that Columbus, OH isn't a swingin' vacation destination of its own, but it kind of pales in comparison to sunny San Diego ... and as we get closer to our departure, we've been glad to be able to show off our fair adopted hometown a few more times before it just becomes "that paradise in which we used to live."

Back in early March, my brother Randy and his wife Jenni came out to spend some of the last kid-free vacation time they're going to have for, oh, 20 years or so. Jenni is in her last trimester and was truly glowing and lovely. She's one of those pregnant ladies who look totally unpreggo from the back or from the neck up (or hips down), which makes me awfully jealous because I'm pretty sure when Nick and I have kids I'll be fat down to my pinkie toes. It was fantastic to spend some good family time with them - things have been so stressful here lately, it was nice to see their faces.

We spent a really great day at the zoo. The weather was exceptionally good, warm and sunny but with a cool breeze. A San Diego Special. We headed right for the lizards and Galapagos tortoises (my favorite first stop at the zoo). There were a couple of these outrageously colored lizards. I mean, seriously ... what kind of habitat are these guys trying to blend into? Hillcrest?



Here are the tortoises. Before San Diego Zoo was even a zoo, it was a menagerie set up for the Panama-California Exposition in 1916. The exposition was to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal and San Diego's prestigious position as America's first port city on the route up the Pacific Coast. After the exposition, a local physician decided to make it a permanent zoo and several years were spent trying to construct a permanent set of enclosures. A bear, elephants, and the various animals from the exposition made up the small set of animals at first, with the usual zoo animals filling in the collection. And then in 1928 a passionate New York conservationist donated a collection of galapagos tortoises to the zoo. Those original tortoises are still alive today, at well over 100 years old. Thus began the San Diego Zoo's mission of conservationism!





A gharial, a lesser-known species among the crocodilian family:


And one of the park's many long-necked birds (ibis, cranes, and herons), a Blue Heron:


Of course, San Diego Zoo's main draw are the pandas. It's hardly the only zoo in the country to have pandas, but the SD Zoo's panda breeding program is the most successful in the country, resulting in a very close relationship with the Chinese panda breeding initiative. It's also one of the only zoos where you can see the pandas in open air (instead of behind glass) in large enclosures. This set-up would theoretically make for great picture-taking, except that the pandas are awake about 80 minutes total each day ... so you end up standing in line for an hour to see sleeping blobs of black and white. Well. This time we were so lucky. After waiting in line the appropriate amount of time, we walked past the first enclosure (no panda) and started walking toward the second enclosure when I noticed that there wasn't the usual crush of people behind me. Hum. So I turned around just in time to see the panda wander out from her indoor habitat toward the food that the keepers had been laying out just minutes before (I thought they'd just been cleaning or something). Cameras up! Click away!



I believe this is Su Lin, a 4-year-old panda, the third to be born at the zoo. Here she is, popping up for a treat:


Grabbing the treats:


And climbing down her balance beam to get even more treats (they look like doggie bones!):


You can see just a teeny hint of her tongue as she licks up her goodie:


We walked up to Polar Bear ridge and took the Skyfari back down. Randy's taking pictures of his friend Jim, Jim's wife, and her daughter in the next gondola back:




And Jenni:


Randy gets me:


We stopped over to visit the koalas, which are always so cuddly looking. Too bad they bite. Hard. Vicious buggers.


Look at all that beautiful eucalyptus!


It was getting late in the day and we were making our last stops over by the big hooved animals. We happened to catch the giraffes at feeding time. I love the curve of their necks in this picture:


There was a relatively new baby (a month or so old) and a slightly older juvenile. They were both taking a bit of a break while mom and dad (or mom and auntie? mom and sister? cousins?) fed at the trough.


Here's the slightly older guy, stretching out his one wee (or not so wee) leg:


To cap off the day, we visited the rhinos. The Zoo and the Wild Animal Park both have a good crash of Indian rhinos, due mostly to very successful breeding programs. At one time, the number in the wild was down to 2,000 or less. But because of the breeding programs, the San Diego Zoo has been able to send Indian rhinos back out into protected wilderness areas to repopulate. Here are some pictures of the Indian rhinos:




Even though Randy and Jenni were only able to be out here a few days, it was wonderful to see and spend some quality time with them. The big negative to life in San Diego is being so far away from our families. As much as we may grumble about having to trudge through Ohio snow or the dreaded "wintry mix" or having to sweat our way through a midwestern summer, I don't think Nick or I will ever take for granted the opportunity to live closer to our families.

Well, this post is getting quite long, so I think I'll break it into two and publish about Chris, Kate, and Josh's trip out here in a separate post. So ... more to come!

Kitties!!!

The title of this post references a video clip that made the round on YouTube a couple of months ago featuring a little girl flipping through a Kitties book and squealing with delight at each overly cute picture ... if you haven't seen it, take a look. While it's so saccharine some people thought it MUST have been scripted, I think people responded to it because when you have adorable kitties, you secretly mush and gush inside in a manner not dissimilar to this little girl.



Okay, now commence the ushy-gushy-ness:



These were taken one lazy weekend morning while Naski was cuddling with(and being forcibly cuddled by) Nick.



Up in the bedroom window, Naski was hunting for birdies (my presence in the room warranted a brief turn-check-"oh-it's-just-mom-nevermind", hence the dreamy far-off look)



Heading outside with Natasha for some late afternoon / early evening sun, she settled down next to me and let me snap away before giving me the "enough" look. I was, like, ruining her peaceful Naski-free time. Gosh. ("I'm bored! Meeee tooo!")









Oh. Yup. That's the look. Sorry, Tasha girl!

We tried, shortly after we brought Naski home, to introduce him to the back porch. The process went something like this. Open door. Encourage Naski to come out with us. Praise him when he steps over the threshold (he was a bit timid, we thought due to being a rescue). Turn around to see which plant Natasha was sniffing. Turn back and see Naski up on the balcony railing. Quickly retrieve said cat and return him to the indoors, where he has stayed since. Consequently, he is relegated to sitting at the screen door in the most lonely and tragic looking way, seething and (I'm sure) fueling his desire to overthrow the queen. It's heartbreaking until I remember the sight of him on that balcony rail, looking far too interested in how one would go about getting down to the asphault below.





Don't worry, he gets his revenge on us. Naski has taken to sitting atop a rolled-up carpet that we let them use as a scratching / climbing post. Some time ago, he started "tagging" Nick whenever he walked by "sentinel" Naski. Nick described it to me several times but I just couldn't picture what he meant ... so I pulled out the camera.

Ski, on his post:


Nick walks by and gets tagged:


Nick turns to me to say "See? Like this!" and laughs at how Naski is still holding on:


Naski and Nick get into a tug-of-war for Nick's shirt. Each boy is bracing himself against the doorjam!


Curious to see if he would recreate the game of tag with me, I first taunted him by peeking around the corner:


After a couple of seconds, Naski reached out to touch my face:


And after taunting him a second time (Monty Python reference intended), he decided to take a swipe at my face as soon as I poked my head around the corner (claws extended!):


Despite trying to "tag" my face, I couldn't get Naski interested in tagging my back, so Nick took a turn playing peekaboo with him.


The only version of peekaboo I can get Natasha to play these days in me peeking into her hiding places and saying "BOO!" This is her favorite place, behind the couch on a bed we keep back there for her.




I realize that our pictures of the cats together are few and far between ... let's just say that Natasha and Naski are truly living out the human standard for older and younger siblings. Now that Naski is much larger than Tasha, the older-cat-dominance that we have lived with for the last 6 months is less clear and he is really vying for power, which makes Natasha about as happy as you might expect.



The reason I got so snap-happy with the cats lately is because I picked up a new lens, the Canon 50mm f/1.8. It's a great little lens, very light on my camera, and the f/1.8 makes for reasonable shutter speeds in midlevel light (much faster than my Tamron 28-75 f/2.8, which is already a pretty fast lens). It enables me to avoid using the flash, which I think is just so harsh and takes away all of the natural shadows and contours that make for realistic-looking portrait pictures. At $85, it's absolutely the best deal in Canon lenses and is so loved by the pros that it has many endearing nicknames: Plastic Fantastic, Nifty 50, etc. I have been debating for a while now about whether to get this lens or spend about 3.5x more for the 50mm f/1.4. I'm glad I got this lens, but some experience photographic a very active 7-month-old (my nephew Josh, who was here this past weekend - pictures and a post to come!) made me wonder if the 1.4 wouldn't be worth the cost for photographing kids. The 0.4-stop advantage would allow for a fast enough shutter speed to get slightly crisper pics (I weeded through the hundreds I took and chose the cleanest). Thankfully, used lenses hold their value very well, so I always have the possibility to sell my 1.8 and upgrade without eating the investment I've already made. Right now, I'm very happy with the 1.8 for most of my uses. 'Til I live closer to my nephews (and soon-to-be-niece!!), anyway!

Oh, one more thing. KITTIIIIIEEEEEEEEEES! AHHHHHHHHH!