Laika is no more - Part 2

The other horrible thing I had to do on Friday was to dig the hole in the backyard. My hands got fully blistered from the shovel, but I didn't care, and it was cathartic in the end.

On Saturday the vet was scheduled to come by at 2pm I think, but in the morning Laika seemed a tiny bit brighter so we decided to take her to another of her favorite parks, Edinburgh Gardens. She had a last jump at her favorite tree, the one with the hole in it that she would always check for possums. She didn't have a lot left after that so we just sat in the grass with her for an hour or so and let her sniff the wind while we cried. We eventually took her home, and gave her all the little bits of kangaroo jerky -- the only thing she would still eat -- that she wanted.

The vet came by on schedule, and of course Laika had a bark at the door, which we didn't think she still had in her. We knew we had to go forward with it though; she might've held on for another day or two, but it wouldn't be happy times for her, especially through the nights. Laika went back and flopped down by the back door while the vet explained the procedure to us. She was really outstanding and compassionate; I don't know how people can do that for a living, but I'm glad there are people that are willing. She started things with an IV that first made Laika unconscious, and as she was putting it in, heartbreakingly, Laika put her head up and gave her a kiss. From there we only had a minute or two and so we went out on the back porch while it took effect. The neighborhood dogs gave one last bark at a passerby, and Laika gave a last bark with them, defending her territory to the last. She went to sleep lying on the back porch, with the two of us holding her and telling her what a good girl she is, while the vet came and administered the final shot that would stop her heart. We took a snip of her fur for a keepsake, and each took a last deep smell of her. Our baby was dead.

Such a good dog. Half crazy, but that only made us love her more. I think we did everything we could for her, which is the least we could offer a dog that we had no doubt would have taken a bullet for us. I've had people I love die before, and have been greatly saddened, but this I would have to call my first experience with "grief". We spent days and days afterwards just going through the motions. To me, the world had a weird tilt on it, like everything was shifted six inches, and I had to force myself to do all the little things you do in life that typically come by force of habit. And there is no place within miles of here that doesn't have some memory of her associated with it.

We were, and are, still torn between wanting to run out and get a new dog, just to fill the hole in our lives, and wanting to hold on to her memory and mourn her loss. Marjorie goes back and forth between wanting to wait, and showing me pictures of cute dogs on dog rescue web sites. I suspect after our upcoming trip, we'll go inflict our lives once again on some unsuspecting dog.

Laika is no more - Part 1

(For obvious reasons, this has taken a long time to write. It's not a pleasant thing to relive, and so I've decided to just post what I've written so far and finish the rest later.)

Right. Well. Most of you will have heard the news about our beloved fur-child Laika. Sorry that it took me so long to write about it but I really just couldn't.

We learned she had cancer (of the worst sort) back in August and so knew we could only buy time for her. We kept picking dates that we hope she'd make it to -- first Christmas, which was a happy time, then her birthday in mid-February, by which time she was really struggling. Each new symptom or drop in her energy sent us deeper into sadness about the coming inevitability. By the final days she was not getting up when we'd come home; her breathing was labored and raspy, and she was not keeping her food down. She was still interested in food, largely because at that point shelved the standard dog food and were giving her nothing but the tastiest of treats.

On Thursday the 17th we took her to a nice park we had discovered recently, that had big wide open grounds (good for us to be able to spot problem dogs approaching) that she seemed to like. This place we had started calling the Island of Misfit Dogs as it seems lots of people brought their old or infirm dogs there. We let her do a bit of exploring, and she managed to find a nice pile of semi-dry horse manure to roll in. We can recognize her smile, and we saw it then for the first time in a while, so how could we be mad?

But we knew the end was nigh, so I took off Friday to spend the day with her. We went back to the same park, thinking it would be her last day. Indeed, she seemed a lot more listless than the previous day, and didn't manage to do much more than flop down on the grass. She seemed content enough to sit there and sniff the wind, but we knew things were over.

We had been in contact with the "Doggie Kevorkian", and so we arranged for her to come by the house the next day to put her down. (It's great that there are people who do that, I just don't know how they can do it; it would kill me.)

Jackpot

I had been pondering a subscription to ancestry.com to search out my relatives. They play a ton of commercials for them here (as I hear they do in the States) and it started to wear me down. I was just... suspicious of them, because they give you two weeks, and then it's so many dollars a month -- but they don't tell you that they charge you for a whole year when the two weeks is up unless you look at the fine print. Also, while you sign up online, you can only cancel over the phone, which is never a good sign.

I mentioned this all to a coworker, and he suggested checking out the library - he had heard that a lot of them had free access to ancestry.com. So I looked into it a little, and found that the State Library of Victoria here in the middle of Melbourne offered it. So I went to check it out today, and wow! They have a big beautiful room dedicated to genealogy, with lots of computer terminals, shelves and shelves of books, and a helpful staff of actual genealogists.

I only had a short time to do it today, so I availed myself of the ancestry.com access, and took some "screen shots" (literally, camera-phone pictures of the screen). Found this World War 2 draft registration card from my second great uncle, as well as this 1930 Census record showing my then-12-year-old grandmother and her family. (I found a 1920 record as well that I forgot to take a picture of that had most of the same people.)

I can't wait to go back. Clearly this is my obsession at the moment; I don't know why. I'm just fascinated by history, and researching my ancestry is just a good excuse. Like the commercial says, it's like being a detective. I will note that I'm doing this all with two main rules:

• No pride (or shame) at anything I find. My ancestors were all individuals who made their own choices through life and there's no reason I should take any credit for their successes any more than I should feel ashamed at their failings.
• No bias towards the patrilineal paths. The women in my family tree contributed just as much to my genetic makeup as the men, and I'm sure worked just as hard if not harder for their families.

Tidbits

A few more tidbits have trickled in from my mother, which seem to confirm that the ship's manifest actually lists my great-grandparents. She says that they came over twice, and that only one of their children was born in Poland. She said this before even noticing the "Were you ever in the United States before" column in the manifest, which shows them in the US from 1899 to 1905 (which were ages 24-30 and her ages 20-26). The date ranges lists for the children only show the dates they were alive, so this gives some indication of their birth dates too. The youngest child listed on the manifest, Wojciech, would have been born during the two years they were back in Poland, which agrees with what my mother said about only one child being born in Poland.

She remembers hearing that they didn't come through Ellis Island, but now we're pretty sure they did. She assumed they came through the port of Philadelphia, but I'm thinking this is probably where they came through the first time. Which means that maybe they did actually see the Statue of Liberty for the first time when they came for good in 1907!

Give us your tired, your poor...

More on the family tree. Years ago my Uncle Bill tracked down the genealogy of my father's side of the family, all the way back to the 1600s, and found that most of my ancestors there come from Krov, Germany. He flew out one year, then many times after that, and I ended up going out for a wonderful family reunion as a result.

Lately I had been considering tracking down my mother's side. I did this once back in the '80s, interviewing all my relatives and drawing up a family tree. This still exists somewhere in my parents' house, but I wasn't able to find it last time I was home.

So recently I asked my mom to fill me in on some of this information, figuring that once I had a few names I'd be able to fill in a lot more with the help of the internet. So I was able to fill out a lot more of the family tree that I posted a link to yesterday as a result (it doesn't show you much there unless you become a member of the site).

But there's more. Searching on a few names on the internet, I found some discussion on a genealogy forum dating back to 2001 that let me fill in a few more names. But then I hit the jackpot (I think) on the Ellis Island site.

I wasn't able to find my mother's father's parents, but searching on my mother's mother's parents turned up this awesome find: the ship manifest that I'm pretty sure shows them arriving in America from Poland. Lines 4 through 9 show Agata and Jan Gasior and their entourage; these are my grandmother's parents, I'm convinced. There's actually quite a lot of information on the manifest, and combined with other information I've gathered previously and with some help from the internet, I can piece together the story pretty well:

They had already spent six years on a previous visit in Camden, New Jersey where they would eventually settle. They went back to Poland for two years, then decided to come over for good. Probably they waited until their fourth child (Wojciech) was born - he's listed as age 0. They brought along a housemaid, Kunegunda (great name), presumably to help with the children; she was twenty and shares the same last name, so was likely a relative. No doubt some tears there, leaving all of her friends and family at such a young age.

And so Jan (age 32) and Agata (age 28), their maid, and the four kids (ages 7, 4, 3, and 0) would have packed up all their belongings and taken a train from their small farming village of Będziemyśl, Poland to Hamburg, Germany to catch the transport ship, the S. S. Amerika, leaving on 8 May 1907.

Arriving in New York twelve days later, the Statue of Liberty would probably have been a familiar site to Jan and Agata, having taken the previous trip over, but the maid and the kids would have looked on with interest. At Ellis Island they would be interviewed by the guy whose handwriting you see on the manifest, and asked a number of strange questions, including, "Are you an anarchist?" Jan had the princely sum of $320 on his person. (Actually, is that a lot, for that time? I don't know.) From there it would be another train to Camden, NJ, to join their uncle Josef Pilas, according to the ledger.

The names (parents Jan and Agata, children Josef, Marianna, Anton, Wojciech) seem to match the family information supplied by my mother - though each of the names has been anglicized (parents became John and Agatha, children Joseph, Mary, Anthony, and... Walter?). It also matches that Joseph is the oldest. Combined that all with the destination of Camden NJ and I'm pretty confident this is them. They went on to have eight more children, including my mom's mother Helen.

I find this all tremendously fascinating.

Fambly

My cousin has been posting old family pictures of my ancestors (on my dad's side at least) to the share genealogy website where I keep my family tree. Some of the shots I don't think I've seen before.

Here are my dad's parents. His mother lived until I was in my twenties, but his dad died when I was only six. I remember visiting him in the hospital.

Frances Rose Schnitzius (Szymanski)

John Alphonse Schnitzius

Here are their parents, comprising four of my eight great-grandparents:

Alphonse J. Schnitzius

Catherine Schnitzius (Schick)

Felix "Phillip" Schnitzius

Margaret Szymansi (Basinski)

Any of them look like me?

Our Christmas

Woke up, exchanged presents, walked the dog. Marjorie started a pork roast with homemade mac-and-cheese. Per Christmas tradition, we exercised, to assuage a little of the guilt of gorging ourselves the rest of the day. Made a pitcher of blue curacao margaritas and had the pork roast, which was really, unbelievably good.

I put together Marjorie's Christmas present - a turntable that's capable of recording to USB - and we broke out our albums that we haven't heard in ten years or so (and argued a bit about whose were whose!). But it has stereo output cables and our only speakers are for the computer and only take a headphone jack. Tried to play it through the TV but it would only play really quietly -- needs some sort of amplification obviously. And the USB output (which is made to record to a memory stick) wouldn't work with my Linux-y memory stick. So we have to wait a little longer to hear our vinyl!

All week they were saying the weather was going to be nice. Then yesterday they changed it to "becoming cloudy". Still way off -- it was grey and cool all day, save for a half hour in the evening that we spent out watching the rainbow lorikeets in our neighbor's apricot tree. Nice day, altogether.

Cherry Hill

Found some pictures on a real estate site of the house where I grew up (ages 0-10) in Cherry Hill NJ. Very evocative!

Front view - my bedroom I shared with Kevin on the upper right.  There used to be those super tall bushes in front of our window that I used to plan to jump out to and slide down in case of fire (fire was my big fear as a child).  Otherwise it all looks pretty much the same!

The view as you walk in.  The red color scheme is all new.  The biggest memory this dredges up is Danielle sneaking out of her bed and sleeping on the steps when my parents had dinner parties.

The kitchen has been remodeled too.  The phone hung on the wall beside the door in the right rear.  Memory for this one (among many): burning my finger on a popcorn popper next to the sink on the left (after being told not to touch it).

Family room, remodeled as well, but they kept the fireplace (even if they've painted the wood).  This was the fireplace where I tied the screen shut one Christmas eve with a piece of yarn.  When the yarn was still there in the morning, I KNEW.

The downstairs bathroom.  How's this for an early memory: I remember asking to use it shortly after being potty trained, and being told by my mom that I didn't need to ask.  Revelation!

The living room.  Piano was against the left wall.  Couch against the back wall.  Ceramic elephant and various chairs to the right side.  My parents used to have bridge parties here with folding card tables.

That's all!  Wish there were more, like pictures of the yard, or my bedroom.

Australians

Here are four Australians that are amazing, in my opinion.

Chris Lilley - Creator of Summer Heights High (which was picked up in the States by HBO) and several other Australian series. Amazingly creative in his writing, but on top of that I think he is maybe the best actor I've ever seen. He completely inhabits his roles like no one else I know, so much so that he can even play a schoolgirl and pull it off. Here's a sample, but be warned, lots of colourful language... clip

Terrence Tao - Mathematician. More than that, he's a mathematician's mathematician. A child prodigy, he's now at a level where other mathematicians compete to interest him in their problems. I read his blog but to be honest, don't understand much. Thankfully he sometimes writes simpler stuff for dilettantes like myself. He may be the best mathematician working today (though he would probably tell you that non-working mathematician is tops).

Tommy Emmanuel - Australia is also home to maybe the top acoustic guitar player in the world as well. I'm not usually a blues fan, but this clip is typical. My hands hurt just watching.

Tim Minchin - Comedian usually situated at a piano, and with eye makeup and no shoes. Marjorie might disagree with me here; we first saw him a couple years back and he was decidedly unfunny. But I've seen some of his recent work and it's amazingly clever. Some samples (be warned, plenty of off-colour language here as well): Storm, Taboo, If I Didn't Have You.

Home invader

Today's wildlife rescue. Got trapped in our house but just hopped on my finger when I tried to rescue him and didn't want to let go.

Balloon

So, yeah. We went ballooning for Marjorie's birthday, and it was amazing. Spent almost exactly an hour in the air, taking off from Fisherman's bend and flying over our old neighborhood. Totally peaceful in the air and not scary at all, despite ranging from maybe twice the height of the skyscrapers in the CBD (which we skirted just South of) down to almost street level. We practically landed on the roof of one of our favorite restaurants and then continued straight down the street it was on, to the amusement of many passers-by and people having breakfast on their deck. The city was particularly quiet since the previous night was the (Australian Rules Football) Grand Final (which ended in a tie). We set down in Elsternwick Park leaving several dogs nonplussed. This was followed by a champagne breakfast at the cafe in the botanical gardens.



More pics to come.

Hoddle Street massacre

A tragedy that occurred in our neighborhood 23 years ago. We walk Laika through this same area several times a week.

View

The view from my desk in our new office:


Looming up above is the highest office building in the Southern Hemisphere, the Rialto Towers, which used to have an observation deck (that Marjorie and I went to on our first visit to Melbourne) which is now apparently a restaurant.

Office

The startup Mark is working for finally has an office:


Quite grateful to be back working in the CBD - I wasn't too keen on working from home. Here's my desk:


I love that the windows actually open; that's rare in an office building. There's a little balcony out there too but you have to go out the window to get to it.

New Car!

After nearly eight years without, we finally have a car!


2010 Subaru RX hatchback. We're looking forward to the change in lifestyle.

Heart

After our last soccer match of the season, I went with a couple of teammates to watch Melbourne's new soccer team, the Heart, play against Perth Glory in Melbourne's new dedicated soccer stadium:





Small crowd but it was good fun and the stadium is fabbo. Bummer was that Former English Premier Leaguer Robbie Fowler scored a penalty kick equalizer for Perth in extra time, and the match finished 2-2.

New car... almost

So last week we went by the Subaru dealership and ended up putting some money down on a car that they had in stock at a different location, on the condition we could still reject it after it arrived and we had a test drive.

We had the test drive today, and everything was great, except that when we went to switch drivers, we smelled something burning. So we checked the oil, and it had way too MUCH. Some must've been spilling out onto the engine block, or something.

What can that do to a car? I'm not exactly sure, but now we are going to have an independent mechanic check it out before we buy. Bummer.

Soup

Had this soup at an Indonesian restaurant:


Any guess on the mystery vegetable? It was about as appetizing as it looked, and the flavor stayed with me all afternoon.

Balloons

Spotted this balloon hovering up the street:


Wow, that's really close, I thought. Then I looked up over our house and saw this:

News

We recently got some scary news about a family member, which I won't go into details on, but which today we were overjoyed to learn is not as bad as it could have been. It's an enormous relief. Enough said.

Running almost simultaneously to that drama we have been dealing with a tumor on our dog Laika. She got it removed two weeks ago but all the signs were bad. Last week we learned she had a stage 3 mast cell tumor, which is about the worst kind you can have - very aggressive. And today Marjorie took her to a specialist to find out more. An aspiration of her lymph node indicated that it indeed had spread, and so she got her first round of chemotherapy straight away, and has to go back maybe five more times. This will give her a 60% chance of surviving a year. We are still reeling from this, but will do whatever it takes to give her a full life in the time she has left.

So, whatever the Chinese calendar may say, we're declaring this the Year of the Dog. We've actually bought a car (contingent on a final test drive we'll take on Saturday) that will let us take her around.