June 29, 2005
Poor Daddy
I got a call from my dad this morning to tell me that he was in the hospital.
He's okay. He had a few blood clots in his leg, and a few of them traveled to his lungs. It's not a good thing, but it could have been a lot worse. (If clots get to the heart or the brain you're pretty much dead or a vegetable.)
I spent a few hours with him. I brought him DVDs to watch, magazines, books, clean underwear, cookies to bribe the nurses, slippers, stuff like that. He'll be in the hospital for another few days. He wants to golf as soon as he gets out, but I want to check with the doctor about that. He says he feels fine and he keeps pestering the nurses to let him out of bed.
He also says he's waiting for the right nurse to come by so he can request a sponge bath. Yep. That's my dad.
This serves as a good reminder for everyone to have a durable power of attorney on file so that your family knows your wishes and has the power to act on them. It's also a good reminder to wear clean underwear at all times, because you never know...
If you're the praying type, my dad could use a good word to the Big Guy for a speedy tee time. While you're at it, you could pray for his golf swing, too. :)
June 28, 2005
Holy Mackerella, Batman!
Don't click on this before lunch.
If you liked Lileks' Gallery of Regrettable Food, you'll, er, love this.
June 27, 2005
You can ring my bell curve
Via Susan who got it somewhere else.
I'm curious what the final results will be. I hope that they email me an update.
Greece Photos Now Available
Follow the link on the right for a smattering of my photos from Greece.
New Design
The blog design is new. The comments still don't work (ahem...Dimitri?) and the comment counter is still busted, but hey, I have anatomically correct petroglyphs on the side!
I "borrowed" the petroglyph images from an artist named Pozzi Franzetti. Feel free to wander over to her site. It's the least you can do since I "borrowed" her images.
Let me know what you think, but only if you have something nice to say. If you don't like it, sugarcoat it by saying that it's interesting or special.
Kat ought really be commended for her work. Especially because she did it for free.
June 24, 2005
I'm sorry Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Be patient...Kat is helping me work out bugs.
I thought there was a block party BBQ...
...that I didn't get invited to. Turns out, 21,000 acres of Nevada are on fire.
Ash is sprinking from the sky, leaving small drifts of it on my yard and wedged into the rubberized seals of my VW's doors.
The entire southern half of the state smells like a mesquite barbeque.
June 23, 2005
On strikes and feline histrionics
I staged my own strike from work this week. I told my boss that I would not come back from my vacation unless he agreed to pay me bonus money owed to me for over a year. I had to use what little leverage I have in my position (an upcoming LSAT course start, with me being the only adequately-trained LSAT teacher in town) to strong-arm him into agreeing to pay me.
He agreed (in writing!) to take care of the situation. Granted, he called me tactless and difficult in the process, but sticks and stones and all...
My cat continues to heal. We’ve had several days of non-urine soaked mattresses, but a few close calls. I am the only one who gives Ruby her rather foul-tasting medication. Consequently, Dimitri is spared the Calico-frothy-mouthed- post-medicated-laser-beam- glares-of-death. Dim swears that he doesn’t “know how to do it as well as you can, dear,” something that sounds amazingly like his excuse for not doing laundry.
In the meantime, my Calico could win an Oscar for her melodramatic gagging sounds and Yowls of Extreme Displeasure twice daily (dark on Wednesdays, both shows topless). I can’t wait for this antibiotic to run out.
And hey, if my boss flakes on paying me, I could always unleash the Y.o.E.D.s on him.
June 17, 2005
It's not news, it's Fark.com
I scored in the 93rd percentile of the weekly news quiz, but only because I read Fark.com every day and gab with Kat.
How sad is that?
June 15, 2005
Smoke on the Water, Catnip in the Sky
(title inspired by Kat's recent post about Classic Rock)
Ruby's clearly taking her eviction much better than I am. The medication that I give her zonks her out, and I give it to her right before bedtime. She stares up at me with glassy, slow-motion eyes and says "Whoa mom. Have you always been paisley?"
I didn't hear a peep out of her all night. She did sleep huddled up against the bedroom door, though. Dim almost tripped over her this morning.
I am in the midst of a month-long vacation from work, which I am enjoying mightily. I fill my days with Dick Van Dyke, errands, cooking, and catching up on reading. (I'm rereading The Da Vici Code and I'm reading Morgan Spurlock's Don't Eat This Book. It's an odd combination of books. I'm a little consipracy-theoried out, but the tin foil helmet seems to be filtering most of it out.)
Today's plans include an outing to the post office (ooooooooo) and the grocery store (ooooooooo), but no work (HOOOOOOOOOOOOORAY!)
June 14, 2005
$260 later, my cat had better piss gold
I took Ruby to the vet, and she didn't tell me anything that your comments and emails hadn't already told me.
The vet took a urine sample from Ruby (I asked her if she had to follow Ruby with a specimen cup behind her butt. She said no, that she gets a urine sample by STICKING A NEEDLE IN THROUGH HER STOMACH AND DRAWING IT OUT. note to self: NEVER get reincarnated as a cat) She found a few crystals in there, but nothing to indicate stonesville. She did find a few white blood cells, which points to a low-level infection.
So she's sending Ruby's urine out to be cultured (I asked whether tickets to the ballet were included or separate. She didn't laugh.) to see if there's anything growing in Ruby's pee (eew.) I'll find out later this week. Until then, we have to lock her out of the bedrooms 24/7 and use earplugs to drown out her miserable heartwrenching cries to be let in at night.
My poor kitty.
Third Night in a Row
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!
This is the third night in a row that my cat has peed on the bed.
She's going to the vet tomorrow...I mean...later today.
June 12, 2005
Cat Squat, Rat Rot
Last night around nine pm Ruby was digging on the bed covers, we yelled at her to stop (that's what she does before she pees) and went to bed.
At four in the morning, Dim wakes me up ever-so-gently ("GOD DAMMIT!") to tell me that Ruby had pissed all over him and his side of the mattress.
While Dimitri tried to decipher the oh-so-complicated instructions on the washing machine, ("You mean I turn this on and it fills with water? Whoa.") I went out to the garage to check Ruby's box. There was a dead rat in it.
No wonder she didn't want to pee in it.
That poor cat was holding her bladder from nine pm until four am, when she couldn't take it anymore. She was trying to tell us there was a problem and we didn't pick up on it.
Dumb humans.
June 6, 2005
My Mother-In-Law’s travel pictures, by the numbers:
Total pictures: 230
Group shots of the family: 30
Probability that the picture includes me: 33%
Solo pictures of people: 35
Number of pictures of Dimitri urinating on the side of the road: 2
Solo Pictures of Jen: 3
Probability that said photos focus on my ass: 33%
Pictures of a one-eyed stray cat: 4
I’m working on an online photo album of my pictures. Remember: patience is a virtue.