Home Again...

Sans Frank Wildhorn (or Linda Eder, for that matter), but it's an appropriate title regardless.

I've recently finished unpacking from the Washington trip. We arrived back in waterlogged Indiana this evening after dodging (in Mom and Dad's case) or flying right through (in mine and Mark's) a bank of nasty storms through the middle of the country. Indiana is still dangerously flooded in some areas -- in fact, I have a friend working to rescue stranded animals from flooded houses using flat-bottomed boats -- but miraculously, all of our houses seem to have avoided the worst of the water. My basement is a little damp, but that's to be expected since my property is divided by a creek that drains a good portion of the township to the south.

Yesterday being our last day in Seattle, we did some walking and shopping. We ended up back at Uwajimaya (I had to go back to buy a sweet red bean bun for Laura, along with every volume of Kuroshitsuji that has been published thus far -- can you tell I'm enjoying the manga?) and Pike Place. We returned to the hotel to watch the Belmont Stakes (an amazing leading run by Da'Tara!), and then had dinner at Ivar's Acres of Clams. I had the honey-glazed salmon over wilted arugula and spinach. Mmmmmm.

This morning we got up ungodly early (it was really only 6:45, but the people in the hotel room directly above ours started a wild, noisy party at 12:10 a.m., so some of us didn't get much sleep...) and drove a rented car to SeaTac. Mark and I were booked on a different airline than Mom and Dad, so we went to our gate and watched a couple of episodes of Code Geass (almost... done... with... first... series...). On the flight to Denver, I busied myself scrawling a longhand translation of chapter 4 of Kuroshitsuji on the backs of receipts and flight confirmations. This was for Mark, who wanted to read the manga but does not read Japanese. (There are fan translations of the first three chapters available online; he had already read those.)

We hit a whole lot of turbulence flying into and out of Denver and over Illinois; I later learned that this was due to a major storm system covering most of the central U.S. On the second flight I translated the rest of the chapter, though the ride was so bumpy that at times I practically lay on my tray table in a futile attempt to keep it steady so I could write.

Mom and Dad got in late -- their nonstop flight from Seattle to Indy was rerouted over Texas to avoid the storms -- but after we'd all found our luggage, we called Laura and Jon and met them for dinner (none of us had had a chance to eat, since airplanes no longer serve food or snacks). We ate around 9:30 local time, which was only 6:30 body time. Ah, jetlag...

Upon returning to my (musty, humid, sweltering, stuffy) house, I was mobbed by a couple of muddy Velcro Dobermans and yelled at by a couple of cranky cats. The cats live in a big two-story kitty house in the basement, but they didn't appreciate the water that had crept into the floor of their residence...

The air conditioning has been on for a couple hours, and the house is gradually returning to a vidable climate. Valenzia is passed out on the bedroom floor (the cool hardwood is apparently preferable to her fabric beds), and every once in a while she squirms and kicks and grumbles, trying to make the hard floor more comfy. When that doesn't work, she comes over and does a cute chin-rest on the edge of my mattress, hoping that I'll invite her up on the bed. It's really too hot to snuggle with an animal that has a 102-degree body temperature, but since I've gone two weeks with no dogs... she might make it up here after all. :)

Sci-Fi & EMP

(No, not electromagnetic pulse... though that's useful for repelling Sentinels, one of which I saw today. In person, even.)

Short entry today; I've just returned to the hotel and haven't yet had dinner.

Today, we visited the Science Fiction Museum/Hall of Fame and the Experience Music Project. The Sci-Fi exhibits were very interesting, with lots of original TV/movie props and fascinating relics of early fandom (one favorite was a page from a 1930s convention program listing a Who's Who of fandom, including a young aspiring writer named Isaac Asimov, who had written twenty stories and had already sold six of them for publication!). There was even a small exhibit on fan conventions and costuming, and -- although they got the country of origin of the word cosplay wrong -- they correctly attributed the start of fan costuming to Ackerman at the 1939 WorldCon in New York. (Take that, anime cosplay elitists.) ^_^

I really enjoyed the Sci-Fi museum, but I thought it should have been larger, primarily to give more time to certain subjects that weren't covered in the exhibits. For example, virtually no credit was given to comic books or the role they played in popularizing science fiction in the mid-20th century. Also, the focus seemed to be largely on American science fiction, with occasional flashes of foreign literature and film. There were a few references to specific anime (a three-second clip of Evangelion in a montage; specs of the Bebop; robot models from Mobile Suit Gundam; a rather inexplicable scene from a harem show...), but it was spotty, with very little on Japan's influence on American sci-fi in the '80s. There were brief references to Hitchhiker's Guide and Doctor Who, but not much else out of Britain. Overall, the museum seemed less like a cohesive and educational exhibit, and more like a walk through Paul Allan's garage full of sci-fi collectibles.

Also, the gift shop was kind of pathetic. They weren't even selling books! After spending two hours looking at the work and influence of authors like H.G. Wells and Poul Anderson, you'd expect the museum to offer visitors a chance to pick up a few classic sci-fi paperbacks...

The Experience Music Project was wonderful -- if you're a Jimi Hendrix fan. There was a full room dedicated to his life, music and smashed guitars. For the rest of us who are not into orange-and-pink butterfly suits, there was an interesting history of the development of the modern guitar, a very brief walk-through of music from the 1960s-1990s (with an understandable focus on metal and grunge, which largely developed in Washington), and a section on Mexican- and Latin-American-influenced popular music. Much as with the Sci-Fi side, though, there were large holes in the timeline that weren't really dealt with (although the British invasion was referenced a few times, there wasn't much of it represented, and it seemed like we jumped through the 1970s and '80s within about ten feet of display space).

In short, what the museums have on display is, on the whole, done very well. The exhibits still need some expansion to be really balanced, though.

Underground Seattle, manga, and lots of sugar...

This morning we went on a guided tour of Seattle's underground (the true ground-level city dating from the 19th century, before all the streets and sidewalks were raised by 15 to 35 feet to solve flooding and sewage problems). The history of how the tunnels came about is fascinating, but is too complicated for me to recount; go look it up somewhere. Most of the early buildings in Seattle actually have a floor or more underground, and many of the tunnel-like sidewalks are still passable, with original glass-block skylights set into the "top" sidewalk to let light into the tunnels below. (On my previous trip, I noticed all the glass block set into the pavement, but I thought it was just Seattle being artsy...)

I don't normally care much for guided group tours, but this one was very entertaining and informative! I just wish we could have had more time to examine all the junk, artifacts and pieces of history that are strewn about the tunnels.

After the tour, we had lunch at the Grand Central Bakery and visited a horse-themed store in the same building. Mom and Dad headed for Elliot Bay (she wanted to pick up the new book on Dan Patch) and Mark and I walked six or eight blocks to the International District to visit Uwajimaya.

Just as a note, it's really dangerous to turn me loose in Uwajimaya. It contains a big Asian grocery, which by nature sells things like Ramune (which I bought) and Pocky (which I bought in greater quantity). It also has a Kinokuniya bookstore on the premises (where Mark and I spent several hours browsing and listening to new J-pop singles in the music section).

I couldn't find any Matantei Loki or Weiss Side B in any language I could read (Loki was available in Chinese, but not Japanese or English), but I did discover something called Kuroshitsuji, which translates to Dark (or Black) Butler. I hadn't heard of it -- it's apparently fairly recent, since volume 4 was on the New Releases table -- but it looked interesting (and I'm a pushover for anything about butlers!), so I bought the first volume. I have a feeling it will challenge my Japanese translation skills. ^_^

[At right: The cover of Kuroshitsuji volume 1.]

Mark bought an Angela CD single and the latest volume of Flame of Recca, and then we split a sweet red bean roll (down, Laura!). Afterward, we browsed briefly at Pink Godzilla and another import shop a block or two away, then came back to the hotel.

For dinner, the four of us went across the street to an Italian restaurant called Mitchelli's, which was WORLDS better than the Italian dinner we'd had the night before (a place two doors down from our hotel, which cost about $30 per person, had mediocre food and was pretty lousy all around). Then -- because we still had our wristbands from the Underground tour, which promised us a 10% discount -- we went up the block to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, where I bought the world's largest chocolate-covered strawberry, a mint truffle, and a brick of chocolate-and-nut-encrusted English toffee.

Mmmmmmmmm.

Then we came back to the hotel, where my stash of Pocky and the chocolate and cherries we bought at Pike Place are currently located, and found mints on all our pillows. If there's one thing that is NOT in short supply on this trip, it's sugar!

Browsing in Seattle

Two days condensed into one post, for your convenience (and mine).

Yesterday, Mark and I got up early to drive back to Seattle (our rental car was due back at the agency by mid-morning), took the Kingston-Edmonds ferry back across the sound. We dropped the luggage at our hotel (the Pioneer Square Best Western, the same hotel in which I stayed on my visit three years ago) and then spent a few harried minutes going in circles around city blocks because the road we needed to take was closed for construction. We managed to find the Budget office eventually, then walked back to the Pioneer Square area.

Since it was still morning and our hotel room wouldn't be ready for a while, we detoured to a nearby antique mall and killed several hours browsing everything from antique camera equipment to vintage comic books. Mark ended up buying a 1984 Hulk comic book, in which... well... Hulk goes crazy and just starts destroying stuff. I bought an overpriced issue of NOW Comics' mediocre Speed Racer -- a volume I didn't have, in which Speed drives the GRX -- and a 1944 training and nutrition manual published by Purina called Dog Etiquette. (As it turns out, my mother had a paperback copy of the same book in the 1960s.) The training and dietary information is horribly out of date, of course, but it's interesting to read and see the prevailing attitudes of the day. The book has some cute artwork, too. My favorite picture in the book is a line drawing of an expressive Doberman being choked while his owner commands, "Heel!" The look on the dog's face illustrates perfectly why we don't train that way any more...

After the antique mall, we grabbed some pizza and garlic bread at a local eatery, then checked into the hotel and spent a few minutes arranging the room and planning the rest of the day. We decided to do a little shopping, since Mom and Dad weren't due in until evening. Our first stop was Simo Silk, where I bought a couple of nice Chinese silk outfits last time I was here. Then we headed to the Elliot Bay Book Company -- my favorite bookstore in the world -- and spent several hours book-browsing. Since my luggage space is very limited, I bought only one book: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, by Lauren Willig. I picked it up because of the Scarlet Pimpernel tie-in (as pretty much everyone reading this knows, I am an avid collector of Scarlet Pimpernel books, merchandise and memorabilia). I hope it's good. I'll review it on Goodreads after I've read it.

One thing I like about Elliot Bay (beside the facts that it's in an awesome historic building, is four stories tall, takes up half a city block, and is crammed full of all kinds of BOOKS) is that they have book reviews written by their staff members posted all around the store. While walking through the fantasy section, we found a stack of Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind with a review card stuck under it. And, of course, I took a photo [at right]. I seem to be taking a LOT of NOTW photos lately... ^_^

Today, we walked to Pike Place market and spent the day wandering, sampling fresh produce, browsing and occasionally supporting the local economy. By mid-afternoon Mom headed back to the hotel and Dad, Mark and I killed another three hours in a comic book store, browsing comics, flipping through anthologies and giggling at weird merchandise.

The store had cute Speed Racer keychains and magnets, but they were all overpriced. :P Where's all the cheap kitsch?!

Stimulus Reversals - Daiseikou!

That means "big success," for those of you who aren't into Japanese. ^_^

Going into today's workshop session, I had very little hope of accomplishing both my stimulus reversal projects. As of this morning, I had one chicken who had been evaluated for color discrimination (in which the chicken pecks only at a certain target -- in this case, blue -- every time, and WILL NOT peck another target, even when the "hot" target is removed and the chicken is prompted to peck red or yellow), and one chicken who was still working on shape discrimination (same idea, only the chicken is pecking at a specific shape, and there are more targets to choose from). In order to complete all the tasks of the discrimination training, a trainer needs to graduate both birds from their respective discrimination tasks, and then, in only one training session, use pure shaping (no prompting, target manipulation, luring or baiting -- just clicking/feeding) to reverse the discrimination so that the bird will choose another target instead of the old hot target, no matter in what order the targets are presented.

Since only one of my birds (the cooperative one) had graduated to being ready for stimulus reversal, I had only four training sessions in which to complete my shape discrimination with my schizophrenic chicken, have that bird evaluated, and then perform stimulus reversals with both birds. My table partner was in the same boat, which meant that we actually had only half the training time, since we both needed to do our SRs.

[At left: Shaping the chicken to peck only yellow, after four days of being reinforced only for pecking blue.]

However, things moved a little faster than I expected, and I ended up getting the shape bird evaluated during the first session, performing the color stimulus reversal during the second session (in a little under 17 minutes), and performing the shape stimulus reversal in the third session (at around 19 minutes).

I know we aren't supposed to anthropomorphize and attribute human emotions to animal subjects, so I can't call this "frustration" or "vengeance," but during the stimulus reversal my partner's chicken went for a particularly long period without being clicked. After a minute without reinforcement, she came over to my side of the table and went after my watch (shiny object is more interesting than paper targets, apparently!). Her pecking actually chipped the edge of the crystal. Annoying, since the watch is an antique that belonged to my grandmother... but it makes a good story, I guess: "Oh, you're bragging about your scar? Well, this watch still bears the mark of a dangerous chicken attack...!"

Since my partner ended up completing only one of her stimulus reversals, I actually ended up with a few minutes of extra training time, so I got to play with shaping my color-discriminating chicken to stretch a giant rubber band... though in the three minutes of shaping I did, I ended up with something closer to a kill-shake. (That'll teach me to halfheartedly shape indiscreet behavior when I'm tired and can't focus on criteria...) ^_^

[At right: Bob, me, Terry.]

After trainer graduation (during which Bob played an interminable loop of "Pomp & Circumstance"), I had Bob autograph my Legacy T-shirt and then spent a few minutes talking to Terry Ryan. This is Bob's last year of chicken workshops, but Terry will be running a similar set of workshops next March. They will cover much of the same material, but have more of a focus on applying the concepts to canine behavior and dog sports. I really want to come back for the next three sessions... Maybe I can work it into my schedule somehow.

After bidding everyone at the workshop farewell, I came back to the motel and uploaded a bunch of photos to my online gallery (for the purpose of sending them to everyone who attended the workshop), and then crashed for a two-hour nap. It takes a lot of brainpower to shape all those stimulus reversals...

Mark and I ate leftover Chinese for dinner. We leave early tomorrow morning for Seattle, where we will spend the next five days. VACATION, at last! (For something called "AVA's Vacation Blog," there hasn't been much vacation stuff lately.) Uwajimaya, here I come... ^_^