Bow Tie

Mystery photo … this one is significant:

No peaking for the answer below until you have have a guess.

Irena (Helen’s Mom) had ovarian cancer surgery last week.   Not much fun.  Boris slept on the pullout couch in her recovery room:

And Helen helped when and where she could:

Irena went home over the weekend where we hope she will make a speedy recovery.

 

I’m about to write a poem, titled “Pullup Timeline”

10 minutes to pick out a pullup bar

10 days to build up the courage to mount it

10 minutes to mount it

10 days to get to 10 pullups

There is a reason I don’t write much poetry.  I’m stalled at 10 for now, waiting for my stomach muscles to catch up.

But my leg muscles finally caught up to my standing desk!  Took about a month, but I am now a full time stander:

(if you zoom in on that photo, you can find a robot named Baxter eyeing a cute redhead named Chloe … Halloween outfit).

I moved the desk to be away from the hot/sunny windows (for sunny days) and closer to the fireplace (for cloudy days):

Nick got a motorized stand/sit desk also, just in time for an epoch record setting 1 week programing marathon, 120 hours of constant programing, leaving 6.5 hour a day for sleeping/eating.   1.1 million keystrokes and 1.7 million mouse movements.  That’s 2.6 keystrokes a second non-stop for 7 days.   His observations and a video here:

http://blog.nickwinter.net/the-120-hour-workweek-epic-coding-time-lapse

He did it for fun, working on their next project, Code Combat, which got picked for some prestigious mentoring last month:

http://blog.codecombat.com/post/64658141307/codecombat-in-y-combinator

 

My projects are a little less ambitious.   I played MacGyver and hacked some copper out of an LED light strip to convert Helen’s phone to wireless charging … it worked ok for about a week:

A clue to the mystery photo.   It peripherally involves this guy:

We interrupted his daily birding activity:

To ask him a question related to that mystery photo:

She thought about it for about 2 seconds:

And then reacted badly:

If you guessed that mystery photo involved a drink made from fermenting an alien life form in sweet  tea for 2 weeks, your guess, while creative, would have been wrong:

If you are brave enough to recreate, info here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombucha.

 

 

If you guessed that they mystery photo was the nose of a doggy, then you would have been right!

If you guessed it was the nose of a 9 week old Coton de Tulear puppy, then I’m really impressed ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coton_de_Tulear )

After much deliberation, Helen decided she wanted a dog, so she interviewed some candidates via the internets and the lucky winner flew in from Oklahoma yesterday:

She verified he was a he:

And setup a kennel/box system for eventual potty training:

I’m in charge of training him in proper cell phone usage:

And Helen is in charge of cuddling:

Irena came up with his name … I’m still learning it.  Something like BonCheck, a Russian word for Bow Tie, which his black eye markings resemble.

And the cats??  They are staying pretty close to the exit:

 

Bruce