Notes from the edge of nowhere

Farewell sw. . .well. . .somewhat grumpy cat

2010-09-10T22:36:00.000-07:00

I have a bit of sad news, we lost Scooter on August 22. As I had written back in June he was doing well, the left eye was healing well and things were good. Then he started to have some more problems, in particular with his right eye in July and the sinus infection seemed worse. We got him in to the vet and tried to deal with both problems. Then the right eye got much worse and when he was in for that they discovered the sinus infection had gone systemic. He was a tough little cat, but I think it was too much for him to beat.

He was a grump, a pest and begged for food more than any of the dogs we've had. I will remember him the most for the many unique ways he came up with to get my attention (which included pulling the lamp off the nightstand) and the fact that there was very little he wouldn't eat. The latter was the funniest to me, when I picked him up as a kitten the breeder told me that he had a delicate stomach and needed to eat only a specific type of food. In the first few months we had him E and I were sitting on the couch and E was eating Salsa Verde Doritos. He dropped one on the floors and as he was reaching for it we saw a little black paw come out from under the coffee table to snag it. We heard a lot of crunching and the next thing we knew there was Scooter looking for another chip. At that point we knew that he did not have a delicate stomach, in fact he would eat a lot of things the dogs wouldn't even consider and never had a problem. A plate sitting on the coffee table was fair game and I have fond memories of looking over and just seeing the top of his head and ears sticking up behind E's plate. I'm pretty sure that he was one of a kind, and really that's probably for the best.

Rest in peace little man and I hope they have an easy access, all you can eat buffet in the afterlife for you. I expect if they do you'll run into Fels there too.

Quiet Saturday night with Zombie Cat

2010-06-05T18:52:00.000-07:00

So I was just sitting here having some leftover pizza, surfing the web and being pestered by a Persian who wanted my food and realized I hadn't posted here for a very, very long time. No real excuse, just haven't managed to do it. At least over the last month and a half I can say I've been dealing with another round of weird health problems for Scooter.

Scooter's left cornea got torn around the end of April which has lead to a weird roller coaster for us. We're not positive how it happened, but it seemed to be related to Scooter's continuing problems with upper respiratory infections. He had a pretty serious one going on complete with really crusty nose and eyes. I had been trying to keep his nose clean and get the worst gunk out of his eyes because it seemed to be bothering him and noticed his left eye was an odd color. I made an appointment with the vet the next , but the Saturday night before then the cornea tore which lead to me panicking for a bit, an emergency visit to the vet and a surgery to try to repair the cornea. Picking him up a few days later was a bit of a shock, he was in a cone, his left eye was sewn shut, both of which I had expected, and there was a white button sewn over the left eye. The button was totally unexpected and made Scooter look like a character out of Tim Burton movie. The reason for it makes sense, the vet does it to have a solid anchor for the stitches, it makes the stitches easier to see when they go to take them out and it protects the eye. It just looked really, really weird. They had also dematted him while he was under so on top of the rest of it he had bald patches. Scooter also got a shot of antibiotics and more antibiotics to take here at home. It was a rough two weeks for all of us, the other cats were pretty sure he was an alien, he was having a hard time getting used to navigating with one eye and the cone and I felt horrible because I was sure I had done something to damage the cornea. Scooter picked up two new nicknames at this point Cyclops (from E) and Conehead (from me).

Two weeks later I took him in so Dd. D could see how it was doing and we found out that the repair didn't hold. This left E and I with a hard decision, the choices were a conjunctival graft (grafting a piece of tissue lining his eye socket onto the cornea) or to remove the eye. After some discussion we decided to go with the conjunctival graft and leave the removal as a last resort. So Scooter went in for the graft and two more weeks in the cone, with a button on his eye and more antibiotics for the upper respiratory infection. By this point he had adapted to the cone and having one eye so he was able to function pretty well and rapidly got back to his old self. Two weeks later I took him in for a follow-up and the graft had taken and looked good, so Scooter was out of the cone and the button was off. There was shock this time too, the graft looked like a thick grey film over the eye. Despite how it looked Dr. D said Scooter could see out of that eye, he just had a blind spot where the graft is. It was all great news, except for the fact the way it looked combined with the patchy fur made Scooter look like a zombie. I started calling him Zombie cat sometime in the first couple of days after he came over and reached up begging for food.

I took him in for his 4 week recheck this last Wednesday and the vet is thrilled with how Scooter is doing, the graft looks good and is already thinning out on the edges. We're waiting another couple of weeks to let it heal more and then we'll start with some steroid eye drops to thin the graft out. The last round of antibiotics has helped the upper respiratory infection, I have another couple weeks of weeks to give him and hopefully that will be it. If not Dr. D said he has some other options for treating it.

It has been an awful experience but I've learned that our new vet and his office are fantastic. I'm really glad we switched to them when our old vet retired and sold his practice. I was also reminded of a few thing. The first is that Scooter is one tough and adaptable little cat. Despite the fact that he is coming up on 13 years old, he made it through all of this with very few problems. The second one is that E and I are capable of coming up with really odd nicknames for our pets.

I'm ready for my close up. . .

2009-10-29T14:52:00.000-07:00

We are in the midst of a large winter storm and I am stuck at home because I can't get out of the driveway. (Well, to be honest I can get out of the driveway, the road is too slick for my poor little rear-wheel drive truck to get any purchase on so I sat there and spun my wheels. I had to get help from the people across the street to get back in the driveway so I wasn't in anyone's way.) I took this opportunity to get some product pictures taken and do some housework. I was also lucky enough to get this fantasic picture of Toffee while she was sitting on the table looking out the window.

Well that was quick

2009-10-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

The firstbig snow hit Friday night and Saturday and we ended up with around 6 to 7 inches. It's supposed to warm up again next week, but I'm thinking this may be a sign of how the winter is going to be. I'm kinda torn, on one hand I hate dealing with this kind of weather (especially driving in it) but at the same time we're just starting to come out of a drought so we really need this kind of moisture.

Friday night kitty picture

2009-10-02T21:26:00.000-07:00

Some people go out and party on Friday nights, me I stay home and surf the net or play games. Oh and as of tonight post cat pictures on my blog. This Whiskey trying to help with product pictures again.

And yes I do have a lot of pictures of her mainly because she stays in one place and let me click away. The other cats are much harder to photograph, Cami and Rogue are too curious about the camera, Damian and Storm are a bit too jumpy, and Toffee moves around too much. The two worst ones though are Cleo and Scooter. Cleo insists on yelling at you if the camera out, even if you are using it for something else. I have to do my best paparazzi imitation and use the camera on my phone to even hope to catch her, and even then I get one chance. Scooter is just hard to take pictures of, if you aren't careful and get reflection from his eyes you get a picture of a demonic pile of black fur with ears.

Random thoughts from the last two weeks

2009-09-27T10:24:00.000-07:00

-Toffee has settled in really well, even Storm the grumpy cat gets along with her. No mutual bathing yet.

- No one in the house, human or feline, was quite prepared to have a kitten around. She is a little bundle of energy and speands a good chunk of her waking hours, racing around the house, playing with toys (rabbit fur mice are her favorite) and attacking anything that walks by. Thankfully the older cats have all taken it in stride and will even play with her.

- I'm doing more canning this year and it has left me in awe of what Grandma did. She used to can two types of pickles, relish, beans, peas, corn, whole tomatoes, tomato juice, pears, peaches, apricots, and several types of jelly and jam. I can't even imagine doing that much and she did it every year.

- When they say to pack the jars when canning tom atoes, they mean to really pack the jars.

New member of the family

2009-09-05T17:36:00.000-07:00

(Please excuse the blurriness, she doesn't stay still for long so it's hard to get a good picture.)

Her name is Toffee, she's around 6 months old, very curious, completely fearless and quite a character. She's been with us about 2 weeks now and so far she's settled in pretty well with the other cats.

I think this means that I'm definitely a crazy cat lady now.

Stirring things up

2009-05-18T21:22:00.000-07:00

*Throws open the door to the blog and accidentally kicks up a huge cloud of dust. Retreats coughing and sneezing and waits until the dust settles back down.*

No lame excuses this time, I just have to accept that I'm not good at this blogging thing and update when the mood strikes me. (And I think I did the lame excuse thing over on my project blog, I'm trying to cut down on the excuse thing so if you want a lame excuse check over there.)

Uhm, let's see. . .nothing huge and earth shattering here. I think we've moved past 'still winter' and are moving into summer, but I could be wrong and there's another blizzard out there waiting to bury us. If it is it will wait until the AC units go up because that will create the maximum amount of chill here in the house. Of course at this point I don't think I'd complain too much, the living room has finally dropped down to 79 F and it's 10:30 at night. It's been unbearable in here during the day and that makes it nearly impossible to do anything. All I want to do is sit around trying to catch a breeze.

Oh, and I'm doing the Twitter thing now too, it's over on the right tool bar there if you're interested in more of my weird random thoughts.

Dispatches from the migraine front

2009-02-17T20:20:00.000-08:00

I saw the doctor again last Monday and the news there was iffy. It was my third appointment there (my rheumatologist is also at the same clinic) and my blood pressure is higher than it should be and Dr. A feels like it is contributing to the headaches so I'm now on a beta blocker which should help both. I felt a bit sorry for him because he rather hesitantly mentioned that we probably needed to discuss my weight at the next appointment since that could be be affecting my blood pressure. He relaxed a lot when I mentioned I knew I needed to lose weight and it would be good to discuss. I can't imagine how many people have gotten upset with him when he's brought up the weight issue. I guess it's good that I realize I'm too heavy, but at the same time I've been too damn lazy to do much about it. I think I need to take this as a wake up call and get my lazy butt back to the gym.

Overall this whole migraine experience has been an interesting mix of good and bad. On the good side I'm not taking antibiotics when I don't need to, and it helps to know that the headache will pass in the next couple of days. I've also done a lot of reading on migraines and know a lot more about them than I did going into this. On the bad side, I don't like knowing that one is going to hit me, plus some of my precursors suck. I can live with being irritable but the cognitive problems and feeling like I'm freezing are hard to take. Also, I'm starting to feel like a hypochondriac because I'm trying to pay close attention to what is going on with my body so I can tell when a migraine is coming on. It's breeding a bit of paranoia, I spend a lot of time wondering about every little thing that happens with me. I'm hoping that levels out soon, I don't want to become obsessive about it.

Gratuitous cat pictures

2009-01-27T20:37:00.000-08:00

Taking product pictures can be a frustrating project because the cats insist on being in the middle of things. Half of the time it's because they have to see what I'm doing, the rest of the time it's because they want to get close to the window which invariably means they are sitting right where I want to be setting up to take pictures. This weekend I did a set of pictures and had to shoo Whiskey out of the way several times. I knew she had stayed nearby but I had no idea how close by she was until I finished the pictures and looked to my left and saw this.

I love the nonchalant pose, I almost expected her to look over and say "Oh, hello. I had no idea you were there." The frightening thing is that it is one of the better pictures I have of her mainly because I was set up for product photos.

The next picture has a bit of a story too. One of the big bits of news from the end of last year is that we replaced our old TV and got a flat screen TV which meant we had to get a different entertainment center. Storm had taken to sleeping on top of the old entertainment center and as you can see she is registering her displeasure at the loss of her napping spot.

At one point she was curled up and laying up there and I realized that if anything broke she would come crashing down on me. . .

Square peg

2009-01-16T21:58:00.000-08:00

Back, many moons ago, I realized that I didn't fit in. The weird thing is that no matter what I did, whether it was wearing it like a badge of honor or reaching a somewhat sullen level of acceptance I was never really truly comfortable with the idea. I realized last year at my 20 year class reunion that I'm finally comfortable with it but never really thought about why. I think I've finally figured it out, I've accepted the idea that no one fits in entirely anywhere. There are places that we fit in better than others but there always going to be some way that we don't quit fit. It normal, since it is a side effect of people having different interests and perspectives, and it's completely OK.

I may be wrong about all of, which wouldn't surprise me at all, but it made my reunion a bit less boring so I think it works out in the end.

Bad Taste?

2009-01-12T17:57:00.000-08:00

Another long gap in entries, and I guess that's just the way this works for me. I'm not terribly surprised, I've done the same thing when I tried to keep a diary.

My most recent bit of news is that it appears that a good chunk of the things that I thought were sinus headaches were actually migraines. This means a couple of things, the first being that it means I've taken a bunch of medication, including antibiotics, when I didn't need to which I'm not happy about. It's meant that I've had to wean myself off one of them and I don't like the idea that I've contributed to the misuse of antibiotics. I know it isn't my fault, and that migrains are frequently misdiagnosed as sinus headaches but it still bothers me. The second is that I've had to play detective and figure out what the causes of the migraines are. So far I know that the main triggers so far are my period and pressure changes. I think that big shifts in my sleep patterns may be another one. Thankfully caffiene does not seem to be a trigger and I have found that if I have some at the right point it can reduce the intensity of a migraine.

I also get to have a prescription for a medication that is a migraine interruptor. As with all my medications, I go out on the internet and check out the warnings and side effects before I get it filled, and it all seemed pretty standard. The medication came with a patient information slip and because I'd checked out side effects already I didn't look at it closer until recently. Along with having side effects that match up with the symptoms of a migraine it also had a huge list of potential side effects, including a few that I have no idea how to interpret.

One is dream abnormality. I'm not sure about anyone else, but my dreams are generally pretty strange and chaotic so what would constitute dream abnormality, maybe a dream about an ordinary day at work?

A second interesting one is inability of the tongue to move. I'm not even sure what to think of that one. Is this actual paralysis of the tongue or is it stumbling over words like you're drunk?

The final interesting one is bad taste. As someone one the snopes messageboard said this is really ambiguous. Does it mean you get a bad taste in your mouth, that you yourself taste bad, or that you sudden begin to want gold lame flares or to put in multicolored shag carpet?

So far the medication has worked well and no serious side effects yet. I'm watching out for a sudden desire of tacky knick kncaks and an interest in polyester though. . .

But wait, there's more. . .

2008-09-13T19:37:00.000-07:00

E and I did a trip down to Denver to go to the Gem and Mineral show and Bead Renaissance show. It was fun and I ended up buying beads which will hopefully spark my creative juices in that direction. I really want to expand the materials I'm using so I'm not sure how that will work with the jewelry business with A but I'll sort it out. The other problem is that I'm a hard time finding brass findings.

The funniest thing though was that night when we were back at the hotel. E was channel surfing and came across an infomercial for one of the CD sets. First off it was funny because we've watched way too much "Whose Line is it Anyway" where one of the frequent skits is a take off on this type of commercial. The collection was Soft Rock from the 70s and 80s so we had a lot of people with what E called poodle hair, the obligatory women with big hair and unusual fashion choices like a guy wearing a track suit to perform in. Then there was some of the music. There were a few that I questioned, for example is 'Walking in Memphis" by Mark Cohen really soft rock? I don't think so but some people might. The weirdest song on the collection was "I'll Do Anything for Love" by Meatloaf. There's a lot of things you could classify that song as, but I'm betting soft rock is probably pretty damn far down on the list.

We're probably weird but that was one of the funniest things I've seen for a while. . .

Is it wrong?

2008-08-25T20:28:00.000-07:00

I am taking a lot of pleasure in knowing that that there are specific people that I irritate with the things that I do. At the same time though it takes the fun out of things because I don't have to do anything to irritate them, I just have to exist and keep doing the things I'm already doing. It's no fuss poking at people.

I guess that leaves me more time to do other stuff, right?

Sooo. . .

2008-08-23T14:59:00.000-07:00

Another long stretch between blogs. I guess it doesn't matter much, it's not like I have a huge audience hanging on my every word who will get upset if I don't post.

At any rate I've had a busy month since I last posted. I got to see Eddie Izzard when he performed in Denver which was just amazing. I got to do the complete fangirl thing and get a Cake or Death? t-shirt and mug. Right after that I went to my 20th high school reunion which was interesting. I got to catch up with some of my good friends from then which was great, but I was also reminded how much I don't quite fit in. The big different is at 38 I have learned to go with it. The truly weird thing was how many people I didn't really get along with or who ignored me seemed glad to see me. I was a good person and did not let the snark out at that point, but I talked to E about it afterwards.

I also had two custom orders to work on, one of which was quite a challenge. I'm used to trying to make something based on a picture or a set of measurements, but this was my first try at making a copy of a costume piece from a TV show and it was quite difficult. For one it's hard to get good clear pictures of the piece and second, they never show the whole piece so you have to do a ton of guessing. In the end I got it done, however I wasn't really happy with some aspects of it. Luckily the customer got it in time and thought it was perfect and that's all that really matters.

This year was going to be my first attempt at selling my leatherwork at the craft show that A and I have sold jewelry at so I ended up being incredibly busy working on getting ready for that. Then we had rain for two straight days starting the Friday before the day of the show so it was cancelled. I'm still a bit disappointed, but it does put me ahead on making things for my Etsy shop I guess it worked out.

I'm sure there's something I'm missing but I'll have to post that later if I remember it.

Iron Crafter

2008-07-24T21:19:00.000-07:00

Tonight we were lazy and went out for dinner at Old Chicago. We forgot that Thursday is Karoke night at the bar there and they fired up about the time we were finishing eating. A family was sitting across the aisle from us and the father stopped the waitress and asked if someone was trying to sing.

She sighed and said "It's karaoke night so we get to hear the same people who can't sing do the same songs again. They really ought to let us drink so we can make it through it."

We laughed as did the people across the aisle and the father looked over at us and said, "it sounds like they need Simon from Idol to come in and help them out."

This all lead to a conversation on knowing what you are are and aren't good at which got me thinking. I know I don't sing well, and since I can trip walking on flat ground in sensible shoes dancing is right out, so there aren't any reality shows I can do. What we need is a reality show for crafters and artisans, something like Iron Chef. An Iron Crafter where you have people with different skills going head to head making stuff and there would always be a mystery supply that had to be used that would be revealed with a flourish. . ."Tonight your mystery supply is glitter!" which would cause the contestants to groan and rework their entire project.

I think it could work. . .or at the very least be entertaining.

Random shopping

2008-06-16T16:59:00.000-07:00

I stopped by the store after work to pick up a few little things, filtered waters (for the birds), dish washing detergent and non-dairy creamer. I came home with those things plus corn chips, hair ties, two frozen dinners and some really cool three tone crayons. The scary thing is this is completely normal. It is nearly impossible for me to do a shopping trip and get just the things on my list. Sometimes it's because I remember something that should be on the list while I'm at the store, but other times it is completely random. I was reminded that my shopping online can be just as bad when I got home because my most recent order from Amazon was here. I got the first Peatbog Faeries CD and then decided I wanted to shoot for the free shipping so I got two books on physics and cosmology. I'm just waiting to see what sort of recommendations that generates from Amazon.

Garden plots gone wild

2008-06-08T15:57:00.000-07:00

A had planted both sides of the garden one last time after she moved to her own place, then started a garden at her house last year. Last year E and I decided to leave one side to go fallow and I planted pickling cucumbers the other side and started up some herbs on that side because the other area was getting taken over by the chives and lemon balm. What we discovered is happening is that the one side really didn't go fallow per say, it's being overtaken by the strawberries, chives and surprisingly enough spearmint which had almost gotten wiped out by the lemon balm. The spearmint and strawberries are even moving outside of the boxes around that plot.

Last year the other side did OK although the weather was weird so my cucumbers didn't grow well and I worried about the herbs. This year everything is doing really well, so well in fact that the raspberries are starting to spread into the garden plat. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with the stray raspberries.

Well. . .

2008-04-15T20:15:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow will be 3 weeks since we let Coal go and I think things are starting to settle out. The biggest change has been with the cats. They've been much more active, in fact several of them have been playing much more frequently, and the hierarchy seems to be shifting a bit. For me it's settled but I still get twinges. I talked to a co-worker last week who lost both of her dogs towards the end of last year and she said she felt more at peace after they had to let one of them go because of her health because it was a conscious decision. I think that is what has happened with us as well, because the feeling isn't as raw as it was with Fels where we had no preparation or decision.

Thank you to everyone who has expressed their condolences, we really appreciate it.

Aftermath

2008-03-29T22:42:00.000-07:00

It's still really quiet here and I keep expecting to come around a corner and see Coal. Coming home from work is the hardest thing because she would either be waiting at the door for me or standing in the doorway between the living room and kitchen looking towards the back door. It's completely thrown off a lot of the little routines we had fallen into over the past few years and the worst for me is the before bed ritual of giving Coal her medication. I know at some point things will shift again but it's going to be a while.

I don't think I ever posted a picture of Coal here, so here is the only one I have. (E was able to get some in the last week but he needs to clean them up a bit before they are postable.)

Farewell my sweet Coalie, I hope you can run to your hearts content now.

Farewell my diamond in the rough

2008-03-26T12:57:00.000-07:00

The slight improvement in Coal's condition was followed by a rapid downturn. She threw up what little food she had eaten last night and it was obvious she was in a lot of pain so we took her in to the vet's and took that final step.

I'm glad she isn't in pain but the house is so quiet now.

Maybe not

2008-03-26T07:56:00.001-07:00

Coal is doing a tiny bit better this morning. Someone has to help her stand up, by hoisting her hind end, but once she's standing she can walk for a short distance. I'm not sure if she got any sleep at all last night because she was up and down and shifting around so much. I know neither E or I got much. I'm glad she seems to be doing a bit better because she doesn't seem to be in as much pain, but the fact that she can't stand up on her own is not good. E gave her the next steroid shot this morning so we'll see how that goes.

Things seems so much clearer last night, it really seemed like we were at that end point, but now I'm not sure.

Well. . .

2008-03-25T20:01:00.000-07:00

I really don't mean to make this blog into some place where I only post when I have something bad happening in my life but here I am again writing about bad things again.

Over the last few months our dear old black dog, Coal, has been having more and more problems with her back legs. Last night she slipped trying to go up the steps on the deck and I had to help her, then she had problems on the linoleum and I had to lift/scoot her into the living room. She did better after eating and having her pills and did fine this morning but by the time E and I got home for lunch she was down and couldn't get back up. E took her to the vet and Dr. B thinks it is a combination of her arthritis and hip displasia since she is a German shepard cross. Dr. B gave her two shots of different corticosteroids in the hope that it would help reduce the inflammation. As of right now she has only moved a little on her own and has not eaten at all. We're going to wait until tomorrow morning, but it is looking like this may be the end.

Blerg

2008-02-02T11:02:00.001-08:00

In past years I used work very hard to avoid the politcal ads and general garbage surrounding elections because it just irritates me. This year I have to figure out how to dodge the crap emails too, and they start much earlier than anything else. I keep sending snopes.com links when I can, and I'm hoping that maybe if I do it enough people will stop sending me crap.

Unfortunately it hasn't worked yet.

Darkness Darkness

2008-01-28T18:50:00.001-08:00

Darkness Darkness
Hide my yearing
For the things that cannot be
Keep my mind from constant turning
Towards the things I cannot see.
-"Darkness Darkness" The Youngbloods

I know I haven't written in a while. I wish I could say that I've been out doing exciting things, but really I haven't been. To be honest, I've been avoiding writing here because I wasn't quite ready to really face what has been going on over the last two months. I can't remember if I ever talked about it here before but I had a co-worker R who had been fighting colon cancer for the past two years. She had really been struggling the second half of lasst year and in December she started to have more and more problems and lost her battle. It has meant that going to work has been incredibly difficult, because of both the air of lingering sorrow and the stress of taking on extra work. I feel like I'm just barely keeping my head above water at times, the only thing that makes it bearable has been that I work with some really fantastic people.

I really thing the only things that are allowing me to keep my tenuous grasp on sanity are the fact that I'm so far behind at work and making things. Hopefully as time goes on I'll write a bit more frequently here, but I can't make any promises. Feel free to check out my project blog, I'm going to at least try to post about what I'm making on a regular basis. Think of it as the cyber equivalent of holding a mirror in front of my nose to make sure I'm still breathing.

Holiday shopping

2007-11-24T22:37:00.000-08:00

We went and finished part of our remaining holiday shopping today. I do most of the shopping online, and this year I did a lot of shopping on Etsy, but there are just some things we had to go to the store for. It wasn't horrible, but it was busy enough to make me a bit twitchy. We went to Bed, Bath & Beyond which is a store I can get lost in because I love kitchen tools and gadgets. I had to make my usual pilgrimage to the wall of nice knives where I could stare longingly at the high end sets from Wusthof and J.A. Henkels before moving on. Yes, I'm probably a knife snob, but I think that you should always go for the nicer kitchen knives because of the quality.

After that it was off to the bookstore to look for something for my niece. At last report she was still into dinosaurs, bugs, prehistoric animals, and astronomy so it's always fun to look for books for her. I still think it's funny that I lived up to the promise I made to my sister when K was a baby and my sister told me they didn't want really girly stuff. I said then that it would mean I would have to get K interested in dinosaurs and I did. I found a couple of great books on prehistoric animals for her and a new Dover book for myself.

All in all it was a good trip, we got what we needed and I didn't kill anyone.

Qandry

2007-11-10T09:20:00.000-08:00

I think one of the most difficult things for me is knowing how to respond to certain things. This one of the reasons I have mixed feelings on trying to find E's blog. I have a pretty good idea about some of the things he might have written about and I know what my response would be to them because they are things we've gone over many times. The problem is I'm starting to get the impression he is hoping that I do find it because he wants me to know some of these things. In my mind it's really a no win situation because I'm not going to feel like I can respond on the blog, plus if he writes about some of the things I expect I've said my piece on them and we haven't gotten anywhere with it. I don't think going through the same discussion on the 'net is going give us a different outcome and I don't want to go into it feeling like I have to defend my side of things yet again.

I love him and I know there are these things that we need to work on but we seem to be stuck on details at this point. Things are this way because of a lot of little decisions we both made and little things we both did. On top of that there are things I can't really compromise on anymore because of my health. No matter how much either of us may want it things can't go back to being exactly how they were and I hate feeling like that is the standard I'm being held to.

Uh. . .what happened to my hair?

2007-11-08T20:58:00.000-08:00

I got my hair cut last Saturday and I'm still not used to it. It's . . .well, it's a bit shorter than waist length, it's flippy and I can do that dramatic toss over the shoulder with it that you see in shampoo commercials. Now I know that this may not sound serious to many people but getting it cut back to that point is pretty short for me, the stylist was guessing she cut about 20 inches off. I've only run across a couple of down sides to it really. The first is that I absolutely have to have it pulled back if I'm going to housework or anything that requires I bend over because otherwise it all falls forward and I look like Cousin It. The second is that it had caused me to end up walking around with a scrunchie on my wrist, and that is just not me.

Medicated for your safety. . .more or less

2007-11-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

Yes, I admit it, I do the better living through anti-depressants thing and it has made a huge difference for me. I really wasn't sure about starting on them to be honest, not because of some of the press they've received since I've taken a similar drug before, but because of what I'm taking them for. I have dysthymia, which is a long term, low grade depression, and as far as I can determine, I've had it for a very long time so it was very much a part of me and I was afraid of a Stepford Wives-type transformation. That didn't happen, but end the effect seems like a bit of a contradiction. I am on more of an even keel, less likely to freak out, have fewer problems with crowds and much easier to be around in general. At the same time the medication has gotten rid of the permanent grey fog that my dysthymia caused so I'm much more alert, on the ball and likely to say what's on my mind. So, what it means is that I'm still the same sarcastic, blunt, somewhat cynical person, but I'm more cheerful and relaxed about it. I'm still not sure if that's a good thing or not, and I'm definitely not sure if it means I'm safer for the general public or not. I'm less likely to break down over little things but at the same time I'm also much more likely to be really snarky.

Do I or don't I. . .

2007-10-20T18:41:00.000-07:00

Today while we were at the store E mentioned his MySpace blog and now I'm a bit torn. I know with some work I could find it, but do I really want to? He's said he uses it for venting, so I know he has to have vented about me because I'm not an easy person to live with, which makes me a tad bit curious but overall I don't know if it would be worth it. For one it could upset me which wouldn't be good but more importantly do I need to invade his venting space like that? To me that's something a person has a right to do without getting any grief about it. I'll have to think about it I guess.

No wonder I feel lousy

2007-09-23T14:51:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a comment on my previous post I discovered a problem with my profile, it listed my age as 251. I've gone in and changed it and I'm not sure how my birth year got changed to 1756, but it does explain why I've felt like I'm a few hundred years old the past few weeks.

Decisions, decisions

2007-09-23T11:36:00.000-07:00

This morning, after some coffee and sleep I'm still thinking about the situation I mentioned in my last entry. I'm strongly leaning towards not jumping in at this point. I tried to wade through a lot of the stuff that has been said so far and I almost blew a fuse just doing that, which tells me that I would definitely lose my cool if I went further which wouldn't do any good for anyone.

I do have an addition to my random thoughts from last week. If you tend to capitalize words for emphasis too much, it also adds a woowoo factor to what you are posting no matter if it is on a forum in your blog or in an email. It looks too much like one of the crankiest websites on Crank Dot Net or one of the exhibits at the Kooks Museum. This is the opposite effect of misusing quotation marks for emphasis, that just makes me wonder why you aren't sure if what you are saying is accurate or not.

Sigh

2007-09-22T21:13:00.000-07:00

I hate being in the position wanting to jump in and kick some ass and get people straightened out on a subject. In an ideal world I could go in, make one dramatic post and it would take care of everything. In the real world it doesn't work that way and it leaves me in this position. Do I say something and deal with the potential ugliness or do I stay out of it and feel sick at heart knowing it is going on? The side of me that likes poking at things to see if they deflate really wants me to do the former and it's hard to fight that. On the other hand I don't want to step in and make things worse. I'm not as worried about me, but I am worried about other people who are involved.

This is one of those situations where some people would say to pray on it. The problem is, I already know the answer there, I'd get nudged to go poke at things and throw a wrench in the works which doesn't really help me make a decision at all. I guess I'll sleep on it and see how I feel in the morning.

A few random thoughts in passing

2007-09-15T13:32:00.001-07:00

I'm just taking a break before I dive back into working on leather stuff, so just a few random thoughts that have been rattling around in my brain based on things going on around me.

Thought the first:
If you are going to include that line from the X-Files, 'the truth is out there', on you website, in your blog, in your forum posts or in casual conversation it automatically adds a woowoo factor to anything you say from that point on in my mind. It's unfortunate too because it tends to obscure your point if you're trying to say something serious and it causes me to be overcome with the urge to make you a tinfoil beanie.

Thought the second:
Dramatically saying you are going to stay away from something or not participate in something as a protest may have the unexpected side effect of proving that you aren't as important or as essential as you may have thought. It's especially silly when what you are staying away from is something very popular, like say ordering breakfast for delivery, and the end result is that you make things easier for the person you are trying to cause problems for.

I survived

2007-08-11T19:51:00.000-07:00

I made it through the craft show A and I do this time of year without too many problems. Well, beyond A being out of town for family stuff so I talked a friend from work, P, into helping me. It was fun and we did pretty well sales wise. The only downside is that I got a sunburn. It is not the worst sunburn I've had, but it is ugly and hurts a bit in places. Thankfully I was wearing a tank top with wide straps so I don't have to deal with a bra strap going over the burn, the only thing I will have to deal with potentially is tags rubbing on the back of my neck.

So, I'm sitting here sunburned, eating ice cream and watching Dirty Jobs because they are at a tannery. It's been pretty fascinating, especially when they were figuring out the square footage of the hides. I can't even begin to describe the machine they used but it was amazingly cool.

Eating like a bird

2007-08-10T18:49:00.000-07:00

I'm bird sitting again and as always it's been fun. I made new toys for their cages which have been a huge hit, the wicker balls are already gone and some of the wood pieces are too. The cats have even been pretty well behaved, they have been hanging around in the area where the cages are but I haven't caught anyone on top of the cages or pawing at the sides.

The evening ritual for cleaning out the cages before they go to bed has made me think about that old saying about eating like a bird. The biggest thing is that it has changed it's meaning for me. Now it makes me think of someone who eats a reasonable amount, but they throw food all over the place and poo in their food dish, which means I'll probably never be able to keep a straight face the next time someone says it.

F*** cancer

2007-08-06T18:45:00.000-07:00

I had a vague plan about doing what I hoped would be a sorta funny post about what has been going on in my life in the last month, but that got completely blown away this weekend. I found out that one of the other members of one of the message boards that I am on is in the last stages of his fight with cancer.

Now, to be honest I had wondered if he was reaching that stage based on one of the last posts he had made, but since there was no confirmation of that at the time I felt comfortable stuffing that thought into an unused back corner of my mind and ignoring it. I can't ignore it anymore, so I've been a mess for the last few days at least in the privacy of home. I'm sad, I'm upset, but above all I am really really mad. This is someone who has fought this with a huge amount of grace and humor (he named the first tumor Fluffy for god's sake) and I am furious that this is happening to him. I'm not the type of person to try to make deals with the gods or feels that everything should be fair, but this is so wrong and there is nothing I can do about it which makes me even madder.

Cancer is something that is familiar to me, my mother's family has a pretty high incidence of it, and I've disliked it for a long time, but in the past years that hatred has gotten stronger and stronger as it steals those who are dear to me. I wish that hate alone would get rid of cancer, I wish it would stop the relentless march, I wish. . .

How?

2007-07-17T20:26:00.000-07:00

I broke down and got a pair of faux Crocs last year to use when I'm running into the garden or switching water because they are esy to clean and don't get damaged when they get wet. Tonight is our watering night and I am struck by one thing about these shoes -- they are not that comfortable to me because they shift around too much on my feet. I am all about comfortable shoes, but I'm wondering now how on earth do people wear these all the time?

Melting

2007-07-17T16:18:00.000-07:00

The last couple of days at work havbe been miserable, not because of the people I've had to deal with (although that probably made things worse), but because of the temperature in the building. The temperature in the building as a whole has never been very stable, our area is usually arctic as is the break room and the bathroom nearest to it, while across the hall is rather tropical. Starting yesterday our area reached a tropical temperature, the bathroom was comfortable rather than cold enough that you worried about sticking to metal fixtures, and across the hall feels like an annex of hell. By the end of the day it feels like my brain is melting and leaking out my ears, which is probably why the following line from a spam email struck me as pretty funny because of the misused quotation marks.

Congratulations,You will get $"202,000" Refinance for only $"697" each month

I'm not sure if I could trust anything that is saying that they aren't sure if they are offering me $202,000 and they aren't sure if the repayment rate will be $697. Or is that they aren't sure if it's really money? My brain is still too melty to figure it out so I'm going to get something cold to drink and flop on the bed in front of the AC. If my brain congeals enough to try to figure it out I'll let you know.

Things from my childhood

2007-07-14T20:08:00.000-07:00

I have very strong memories of watching TV with my father. He wasn't into sports so what we watched were documentaries and then we would sit and talk about the show. The two that I really remember watching are Cosmos and Connections. I remember Connections more than any other show because I was fascinated by how interconnected things were and it really affected the way I looked at things. Over the years this has been one of the shows I really wanted to get my own copy of, but the few times that I could find it I couldn't afford it. Yesterday I got a catalog that showed that the show had finally been released on DVD, so now I have to make the decision on if I want to put it on a credit card or not.

Visitors

2007-07-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I noticed a new bird in the yard. I didn't get a good look at it but I was almost sure it was a blue jay. After the past few days I am sure it was because I saw three frolicking in the front yard on my way to work the other day and today startled them while they were hanging out around the old flower box on the front porch. I'll be interested to see if they are living in the area or if they are just passing through.

Vegas

2007-06-28T18:33:00.001-07:00

The weekend trip was fun, and I even have pictures, which I'll try to get uploaded this weekend. I realized a few things though.

1. Walking to the Wynn at night when everyone is out and it's still 100 F is a bad time to remember you don't like crowds or heat.

2. Air conditioning is nice, but it's a bit high when a person who doesn't like being hot has to go outside into the 100 + F to warm back up.

3. I notice odd things at places we visit.

The last one requires a bit of explanation. We walked down to the Wynn Friday night just to take a look at it and I ended up completely enthralled with the decor, particularly the floors. The carpet had a very unusual design, it was burgundy with different asymmetrical floral sprays arranged on it and there wasn't a set pattern to how the designs repeated, and then the same design was carried over into tile mosaics in the marble floor. I got so excited by the designs that I ended up taking pictures, and they will probably end up inspiring a tooling design or two or three. The problem ends up being that no one else shares my interest so I end up feeling really out of place.

The Wynn also provided me with a truly surreal moment too. We had walked down onto a lower level to look out at the area where they do a light show outside and I saw a group of young women at one of the bars. I guessed it was a bachelorette party based on the fact that one of them was wearing a veil and she seemed to be carrying a largish, pink stuffed animal. I didn't really think about them again until just before we left and decided to stop by the bathroom on our way out. I rounded the corner into the women's room to find that the bachelorette party was there and were facing towards the mirror that was on the wall behind me. The surreal part is that the largish pink thing I had noticed was actual a large, inflatable penis (with a cartoon smiley face on the tip) and the bride to be was standing there holding it at about groin level. I stopped, stared and I think my jaw dropped a bit because I was faced with a relatively petite woman holding a large inflatable penis in front of her in roughly the correct placement. It felt like it took me forever to break out of the shock, dodge around them and make it to the relative safety of the stalls. I couldn't even manage a snappy comment or anything, I just got out of the way.

Signs of Summer

2007-06-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

Summer officially starts next week and we completed the final chore that signals summer in our house, the air conditioners went in yesterday. We realized several years ago that we had to do something about the front part of the house, it has a full southern exposure and when we hit the hotter parts of the summer it was at times it close to what the outside temperature was. That was uncomfortable for the humans but it was unbearable for the dogs, so we got a window AC unit for out here and then got one for the bedroom so it was a comfortable temperature to sleep. Of course now that they are in I need to work on getting them settled in to a temperature that is livable.

It has been a busy and somewhat stressful few weeks for me here, E and I are doing a long weekend trip starting next Thursday so I've bee trying to get things done before we go. A lot of those things have had to do with the fact that A is doing a craft show next Saturday while we're gone so there was a definite deadline for them, plus I had a commissioned leather piece to make so I'm behind again on getting stuff done for my Etsy store. I'm trying to not be too stressed about that, but it's hard because I know I need to develop some sort of presence there through regular listing. I also need to come up with some new items as well which is an additional stress. Another stress that came up last night was that A realized that the August craft show we do is the same weekend as her cousin's wedding. She had planned to combine going to the wedding with visiting her father who lives in the same area since she hadn't seen him for several years. I'm certainly not going to say she should chose the show over the trip, that would be ridiculous, but I have to decide if I'm comfortable doing that show on my own since E may be gone that weekend as well. That's something I'm going to need to ponder.

Random theories

2007-06-15T20:32:00.000-07:00

These are just some random theories and observations that came back to mind due a number of situations on and off the internet.

1. There are some people that aren't happy unless they are complaining. I get tired of it and disregard a lot of what the person says. On any of the forums I'm on if I notice that someone who complains a lot has posted to a thread my first thought is to wonder what they are complaining about now. It leaves me wondering, do they realize that other people are thinking things like that and is that really the sort of reputation they want to have?

2. There are people who like drama and like to be the center of attention. It's important to learn how to recognize them so you can keep from getting caught up in their stories and drama but they are interesting to watch so it doesn't hurt to stay in the area. Just make sure you're a safe distance away.

3. One of the most important things to learn is when it is a good idea to walk away from something, especially heated discussions.

First of the month blues

2007-06-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

I'm doing this entry because I'm procrastinating. You see, it's the first of the month and I need to pay bills, which I hate doing. Part of it is the tedium, even if I do pay a lot them online, and the rest is watching our money slip away. It's definitely better than it used to be between E's promotion and my change to a job that pays about twice what I used to make, but it is still a bit depressing to watch the money slip away. At this point I'm also having to consider how we're going to pay for some potentially expensive dental work for me since our dentist thinks that the nerve in my left front tooth is dying because the tooth has changed color and has a really slow reaction to cold. The cost only makes the whole thing more stressful for me because I have a bit of a needle phobia, surgery in general makes me nervous and dental work makes me really nervous because I can't see what they're doing.

I guess I should give in and quit procrastinating and get these bills done so I can more on to more interesting things that will take my mind off the tooth.

Memorial Day part II

2007-05-28T09:48:00.000-07:00

I did a bit of research last night and did discover that Memorial Day did start out as a day to honor the military dead, while Veterans Day was to honor living veterans of military service, so I was wrong about the original purpose. I think that comes from the fact that in this part of the world Memorial Day is not just for remembering military dead, but also a time to go check on the condidition of your family's graves and and monuments because it is the point where you're no longer worried about frost danger and can bring live plants.

This all makes me start thinking, aren't these all things we should be doing on a regular basis anyway? In that case it seems a bit sad that there have to be special days devoted to honoring those in the military living or dead.

Memo to me. . .

2007-05-27T22:10:00.001-07:00

Please remember that not all fora are like the ones at snopes and you can't post the same way everywhere. It's better to just keep my mouth shut on topics that could be touchy if I'm not sure what the reception will be.

Yeah it's been a bad week for things like that, I ended up doing it several places. I do blame it on developing a certain posting style at snopes coupled with my poor social skills and my scattered way of thinking. I guess the only saving grace is that I was able to keep my cool in all cases, but I shouldn't have said anything in the first place or just dropped it before I got my foot in my mouth up to my hip.

Memorial Day

2007-05-27T18:47:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day has been a weird holiday for me since the point where I was old enough to really understand our family history. This is because there is one person that has truly impressive military service in my family a person who severed as an aviator in WWI suffering pretty serious injuries and went on to serve in WWII. It's the type of thing you expect to be remembered and talked about on Memorial Day, right? There's a small hitch though, it is my Opa and he was serving in the German military and Luftwaffe. It makes for a really weird disconnect with the rampant patriotism you see around this weekend. E always tells me that the day is supposed to be for memorials to anyone, but that's not what happens usually, so I try to keep myself away from the overly patriotic stuff and do my own little memorial. I just wish it could be a day to do a memorial for anyone.

Well, that was fun (an update of sorts)

2007-05-24T17:34:00.000-07:00

After I got home from work today, I got the birds fed and went down to check the freezers. Everything was frozen back up so I started the process of going through them. After some serious thought last night I decided that I'm not going to try and salvage any of the meat because the last time I can be sure the freezer and fridge were running was Monday night and everything was just a bit cooler than I would expect something sitting out in the basement to be when I discovered the problem last night. I just don't think I can trust the meat, particularly the chicken and seafood, after that. In this case the desire to avoid food borne illness wins out over the part of me that hates waste, but I feel just a bit sick over throwing out all that food.

Oh #@%&!!!!!

2007-05-23T17:52:00.000-07:00

I just went downstairs to get something for dinner out of the freezer and discovered neither it or the extra fridge were running. I eventually pinned down the problem, flipped the correct switch and got everything running again, however they had been off long enough that everything had thawed. Some things I think I can salvage but all of the icecream and all of the meat will have to go. I'm really upset about the meat because I had just stocked up and I'm not sure if it would even be safe to try to cook any of it. At this point I'm letting most of it freeze back up so it will be easier to clean everything out and I have a couple of things in the fridge up here while I figure out if I want to try to cook it.

I had planned to clean the freezer out in the next few weeks, but this is NOT how I planned to do it.

A mellow Sunday

2007-05-20T17:04:00.000-07:00

It's been a nice quiet Sunday. I got most of the housework done yesterday so I went out and did a bit of shopping today. I ended up spending a good bit but I had expected that. I got two new pairs of Marrells, a pair of Mary Janes and a pair of sandals, I figured I should go ahead and get them now so that I can be sure that they were broken in before we go to Vegas next month. The sandals shouldn't need much, they are light little strappy things, but the Mary Janes are a bit stiff at the heel so I'll want to wear them a bit. I also picked up a couple of things we needed like new rugs for the bathroom. The only real splurge was a new shirt, so I didn't do too bad.

I didn't realize quite how mellow it was until I saw this though:

It's hard to see his face due to the back lighting, but that is Scooter in the front laying in the sun with Cami laying behind him resting her head on his hip. This may actually be a sign of the end of the world because Scooter doesn't let the other cats lay against him or even get this close. If I come across one of the cats grooming Scooter I'll know the end is near.

On my own again

2007-05-19T09:33:00.000-07:00

E left this morning to go to a week long conference today and I'm actually a bit jealous because it is in Vegas. This means an entire week on my own and since A also went to the conference I'm also bird sitting which is always fun. The only problem I've run into is that the bird cages are by my usual crafting space, the dining room table, and I'm not entirely sure about setting rivets and dying stuff near them, so all of that I'll have to do in the back room.

E had to leave the house round 10 this morning so he could get to the airport with plenty of time so I was up much earlier than I usually am and I've actually gotten a lot of stuff done so far. I'm hoping that I can keep the momentum going and get even more done. Thant way I can go out and do a bit of shopping tomorrow.

In other news I tried Jones soda. (Yes, I lead pretty unexciting life, you wanna make something of it?) They recently switched over to using cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup and when I saw it during a trip to Wal-Mart a few weeks ago I thought I'd see how it tasted. I'm now hooked, particularly on the green apple, and I'm now looking for other flavors.

Yes, I know

2007-05-11T20:12:00.000-07:00

I'm back to not being good abut updating my blog here. Part of it is still trying to get a good rhythm of making stuff and doing my online stuff and the rest is that I'm getting my craft area organized. People who know will be surprised by this, my mother would be stunned, because I'm not the tidiest person in the world. I'm a flat surface clutterer and this was just made worse by having three people's worth of stuff in the house. After A moved we had rearranged the upstairs but had done very little with the bedroom she had used in the basement beyond using it store some boxes of things that we wanted to get rid of. In the past few months E had been talking about moving his computer down there so he had more room and I had more space in the back room for my craft and leather working supplies. A week or so ago E started to get his computer and other stuff moved downstairs and we got a new shelf for the back room so I've been working on getting things cleaned up and organized back there. I won't be able to finish it complete until we get a shelf for the closet, but it's crazy enough back there that this is keeping me busy.

This post brought to you by the random setting on my iPod

2007-05-04T18:28:00.000-07:00

I have a cool under the cabinet docking radio/stereo in the kitchen that I can plug my iPod into which is great for when I'm cooking or cleaning in the kitchen. Tonight when I was making dinner the song MTA by the Kingston Trio played. The song, for those of you who haven't heard it, is about a man named Charlie who gets stuck on a streetcar in Boston because he does not have the money to pay for the transfer. There is a point in the song where it says that Charlie's wife hands him a sandwich as the car goes through a specific station, and I always wonder why on earth she can't hand him a nickel at that point. It makes you wonder if she likes the quiet or is carrying on with the milkman or something.

This article on Wikipedia has more information on the song and I'm thrilled to see the author wonders the same thing about it I do. This article has more on the history of the song, the lyrics and even traces Chaarlie's route.

Waiting

2007-05-04T15:46:00.000-07:00

Today I stayed home from work to wait for the cable repairman. Normally I would find it a bit frustrating, but today I took the opportunity to excavate the living room and get a bunch of other little things done. I feel like I got a lot accomplished and it's wonderful to have all the newspapers and old catalogs gathered up and ready to go to recycling. Since the cable repairman actually did arrive before noon I went and ran errands in the afternoon and I'm working on getting some dishes done right now. The only thing I didn't get to is getting started on my next large leatherwork project, but that's OK I'll try to work on that tonight since A is not coming by to work on jewelry.

I survived!

2007-04-29T11:46:00.000-07:00

The feast was last weekend and despite early indications I survived and the whole thing was a great success. It was an interesting process. First we lost the site we had originally planned on using because of a scheduling mistake. Then at the last minute we ended up with one of the meats for the feast not being available and another being priced much higher than what was quoted. Thankfully, the autocrat and I had done this many times so we had a plan B for both and just had to back up a bit. Beyond those little glitches everything went very smoothly, there was plenty of food and everyone was happy. It took me a week to recover and get caught back up with everything else though which is why it took me until now to post.

Right before the event we got the final word on the mystery lump on Scooter. It's. . .well. . .it's still a mystery. The exterior is some sort of osteoma (bony growth) and the squishy part in the center is an abscess or infection of some sort. The options are to leave it or have it removed and we have decided to go with getting it removed. The trick will be getting that scheduled.

Scooter's big adventure

2007-04-13T19:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was our big trip to the CSU Veterinary teaching hospital to see if they could figure out what the lump is. The appointment was at 9:30 and started out with two student vets getting the history and vitals. Scooter of course was not impressed with any of this and hissed several times which is odd for him. They left to go talk to the vet and we waited. Thankfully it was enough time to let Scooter settle down because he got handled again when the vet, Dr. D, came in. She was excellent with him because she'd check something and give him time to relax then check something else. She was just as puzzled as our vet here had been so she wanted to see about doing some more testing. Luckily thy were able to get it all done yesterday so we left Scooter and they took him to get blood tests, chest x-rays, a CT scan and another biopsy since the lump had regrown. They said they would call when it was all done.

We left to do some shopping, including looking at vehicles since E's car was getting close to being on it's last legs. He had been checking online and one dealership had a very good and responsive internet sales department so he wanted to stop there first. We found the salesman that E had been referred to and he got us set up to do some test drives. E decided he liked the first truck we drove, which was strangely enough the one he had emailed about, and so he filled out the initial paperwork and we went to get lunch. After lunch we stopped by a fabric store I had heard was going out of business. While we there the car dealership called back and said they had everything ready to go so we went back to get the final paperwork done on the new truck. At that point it was around 3 in the afternoon and still nothing from the vet's office, so we drove back up there and sat for a bit until I pointed out to E that just sitting and waiting was making the whole process worse for me so we went to walk around the mall and while we were walking E's cell phone started buzzing and said he had a message, even though neither of us had heard it ring. It was the vet student, D, calling with an update, Scooter was just going into get the CT scan at that point. We went and did a bit more shopping and then went bake to the teaching hospital. D came out and gave us a more detailed update, including the fact that there were some problems when they had sedated Scooter to get the x-rays. Shortly after that Dr. D met with us and we got the full run-down. The x-rays had been clear, but they had sedated Scooter to get them taken and he either had stopped breathing or was breathing so shallowly they couldn't see it, so he was rushed to critical care where they reversed the sedation and started to do kitty CPR. He came out of it swinging so Dr. D is thinking he just had a brief period of apnea from the drug that was used for the sedation. All the other tests had gone well . The lump still looked vaguely tumor-like but has the vets there puzzled too. When the radiologist, who has been there for a very long time, looked at the CT scan films his first comment was "Well, that's weird". They had called the oncologist in to do the biopsy and she thought it was odd too because the exterior of the lump is very hard but it had a squishy center. As Dr. D said, we really have more questions than answers after all of that but we do know a few things. The lump is up around Scooter's jaw bone but it does not seem to be attached and it is not eroding the bone like a cancerous tumor would and there are a couple of reasonable surgical options once they figure it out.

At that point we left again for a bit since they wanted to make sure he was out of the anesthesia so we got coffee and sat and talked then went back and waited some more because Scooter just didn't want to come out of the anesthesia. We finally left around 7 pm. In the end, Scooter has continued his streak of confusing veterinarians and we're waiting for test results again. They are supposed to call early next week. Scooter is snuffly and a bit out of it today so we're keeping a close eye on him, but as Dr. D said yesterday, he's a tough little man, so he'll be fine I think.

Forgot to mention

2007-04-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

Please check out the new addition to the right. It's a nifty thing called Etsy Mini and on this blog it is featuring some of the cool things I've found on Etsy that I'd like to get someday. Please check out these wonderful artisan's stores (or the rest of the sotes on Etsy) and see if you can find something you can't live without.

Ode to a lumpy cat

2007-04-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

We noticed last week that it looked like the lump on Scooter's jaw had come back. He went into the vet yesterday and yes, it was back and had spread around part of his jaw. Our vet was not entirely comfortable with surgery on it so he recommended going down to Colorado to see a specialist. So, E will be calling the veterinary teaching hospital at CSU today and see when we can get Scooter in. He is still doing well, being his usual ornery self, which is a good sign, but I'm worried to death about this. I'm really worried that I did something to cause it like by accidentally clunking him in the chin a few months ago or by him taking so many antibiotics for his upper respiratory infections.

On the upside Scooter has acquired a new nickname, we're calling him Mr. Lumpy now.

Rights vs. Expectations

2007-04-04T14:59:00.000-07:00

This is something that has been gnawing at me for a while now, the way that expectations are usually presented as something someone has a right to. A right is large, important issue and it is often set in stone. The freedom of religion (or from religion) in the public sphere in the US is a good example of this. It adressed the larger issue of an official religion being established for the country and then other religions being marginalized or supressed. That is a serious and importat issue and it is appropriate that the freedom from that sort of situation is a right. Getting good service, having everyone follow the rules, or having rules applied uniformly are expectations. In a perfect world they will happen, in the world we live in they are not guaranteed. Due to that they are not, nor should they be presented as, something we have a right to.

Well

2007-03-10T15:29:00.000-08:00

I've really been bad about keeping this updated, haven't I? The worst part is, I really don't have a good reason for it either. At any rate things have been relativewly quiet here. I've continued to work on stuff for my Etsy store, and we've even been pretty good about getting together to work on jewelry. A is looking seriously at doing more craft shows which should be good for the business. I volunteered to do a feast for an SCA event in April so I've been busy working out the menu for that and trying to get back in the swing of doing something like that.

The only other thing is that Scooter apparently has the lump that won't go away because it's still there. We're trying another round of antibiotics but it just doesn't seem like it wants to leave. He may have to go into the vet again this month becaus of that.

I updated my projects blog today for anyone who might be interested too.

Talking to cats

2007-02-20T21:04:00.000-08:00

I realized Monday that I spend an awful lot of time talking to cats. It's not in the baby-talk, crazy cat lady fashion either (well most of the time it's not), I tend to talk to them normally. A good chunk of that talk is things like "I can't read through you", "Did I say I wanted a cat sitting on my stuff?", "Hey, what are you doing up there?", "Stop trying to puncture me" and "Get out of there", but there are times when it is a bit more mutual. Cleo meows a lot and she meows in response to a person talking to her so it ends up sounding like a conversation, although I often feel like we are both talking to ourselves at the same time or maybe that we're humoring each other by responding and it's just cascaded. Damien likes to 'sing', do long sweeping meows in parts of the house that echo and if you here him doing it and respond he will come find you. Then there is when Whiskey and Cami are playing with a toy. They will chase it around and then carry it, meowing the whole time, to where you are. They don't stop meowing until you praise them, which sounds somewhat silly when you are praising them for catching a green foamy ball. That is unless you are overrun by foamy balls, and in that case I have some cats I'm happy to rent out to you.

Just a little wind

2007-02-16T12:21:00.000-08:00

We're under a high wind warning right now which works out to having sustained winds around 35 to 45 mph with gusts up to 65 to 75 mph. Every time one of the big gusts hit it sounds like the house is going to blow apart but otherwise not too bad. When E and I were in Vegas they had winds around 50 mph with gusts up to 90 mph. A said she was sure her trailer was going to blow apart a few times during that week.

Cheyenne is regularly on the list of the top ten windiest cities in the US, and we have some level of wind all the time. Since I've lived here most of my 30 some years wind just doesn't seem to be that big of a deal unless it is strong enough to cause damage to the house or it causes a blizzard. Otherwise you just learn to live with it. You get trash cans that won't blow away easily or you work out a way to attach them to something solid (ours happen to be hooked onto the rails on the deck with bungee cords), you set fence posts a little deeper, and you replace flags a bit more frequently. What is interesting about it is looking at the wind speeds we are used and where they fit into the Beaufort Scales. Wind speeds of 31 to 38 mph are considered near gale and that is just at the point where I think that wind is getting a strong but it's not awful yet. I thing it's starting to get bad at the next stage 39 to 46 mph. That is a gale force wind. The top wind gusts they forecast for us today, 75 mph, that is a hurricane force wind. And yet it's really only the truly high end winds, 45 or 50 mph or higher, that bother me anymore. It's amazing what environmental factors you can adjust to, to the point that they are the norm.

It's been a while

2007-02-10T17:59:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since my last entry so I though I'd do a couple of updates here.

Scooter is doing fantastic. The lump isn't entirely gone but since it is not getting any bigger the vet said to watch it and see if we need to do another round of antibiotics.

Work has been crazy this last week because of computer problems with the agency that manages the internet access and one of the programs we use. We lost about 2 days worth of work time due to their poor planning. The only upside is that this happened during the legislative session so it ha been noticed by someone other than us lowly state employees.

The other big news is that my mother-in-law has had to be rushed to the hospital in Salt Lake City twice in the last few weeks. Luckily the second time it appears to be a problem with some of the medications she was put on after the first incident but it's made it a pretty wild couple of weeks.

Why do I do it?

2007-01-25T18:15:00.000-08:00

I admit one of my guilty pleasures is watching shows on supernatural stuff, you know, ghosts, aliens, and so on. There are times I don't know why I do it because I spend a good chunk of time yell at the TV. This is particularly true of shows on ancient astronauts. The whole idea that ancient humans just couldn't be smart enough to come up with things on their own just irritates the hell out of me. Yet I still watch the shows, rather than shut them off and turn on some music or something.

Ouch

2007-01-22T20:49:00.000-08:00

I slipped and fell when I went to put the dog out last night after she ate (which was right after my post here). As usual I have no idea how it happened, one minute I feel my foot sliding a bit, and then suddenly I'm going down. The worst part of it is that I partially landed on the poor dog who yelped and looked at me sorrowfully as if it were her fault. After a couple of seconds to get my wits back I drug myself up and went into the house to change clothes because it was snow on the deck and I was now cold and wet. I really expected to feel really stiff and sore this morning but I didn't. Now, over 24 hours after the fall, I feel like someone hit me with a truck and then came back and hit me with it a few more times. So I'll take more ibuprofen before bed and hopefully I'll feel a bit better tomorrow.

A quick update

2007-01-21T19:14:00.000-08:00

I've been spending a lot of time working on different projects lately. A has agreed to let me sell lanyards at the craft show in August so I have been trying to make a few each week so I have a decent selection. I've also been listing them in my Etsy store to see if there is any interest in them there. I'm also trying to make an effort to get a few more leather items into my Etsy store mainly tooled or stamped pieces, but that may take a bit since it takes me a while to make them. On top of all of that A is trying to come over every Monday to work on jewelry for the business so we have a decent stock for the show in August and I am trying to work out new ways to display our pieces. Oh, and I agreed to run the kitchen for an SCA event in April so I have to work out a menu for that too. It's been nice to be doing stuff rather than sitting around surfing the 'net but my participation on the ULRP message board is suffering a bit.

The only other real update is that Scooter continues to do well. (In fact, he is sitting next to my chair right now staring at me as if he is trying to will me to feed them a few minutes early.) I can't tell if the remaining lump has gone down any but it hasn't grown and he is his normal ornery self. He's definitely unimpressed with getting antibiotics twice a day but so far has not tried to eat my arm over it which is a bonus.

Scooter update

2007-01-12T17:51:00.000-08:00

Today we heard back about the mystery lump. It is not cancer. It is some sort of infectous process caused by a skin infection of some sort which means the treatment is pretty simple, a broad spectrum antibiotic twice a day. I'm just glad that I'm an old hand at giving Scooter medications and that this is a liquid antibiotic. The trick will be remembering to give it to him.

This is your cat. . .this is your cat on drugs

2007-01-04T17:50:00.000-08:00

Scooter went in to the vet to have the lump on his chin checked out yesterday. We got good news, bad news and weird news out of it. The good news is that the lump did not have the characteristic glow of osteosarcoma on the x-ray. The bad news was that it firmly attached to his jaw and appears to be at least partially bone. The weird news is that the vet's office has no idea what it is. So, the vet went in and removed about 3/4 of the lump and it is being sent to Ft. Collins to CSU to be tested. Now we just have to wait and see what the lab has to see.

Scooter was able to come home last night which was nice, but he was still pretty drugged up so he could barely walk when he came out of the carrier. For his own safety, and to give him some relief from the other cats bugging him, I picked him up and moved him into the bedroom and shut the door. Normally he hates being picked up and carried, but this was like carrying a rag doll or a stuffed animal. By the time I let him out he was doing pretty well but he still was having a hard time walking so I was surprised to see him get up on the stand where we keep the dry cat food, as well as going around to make sure all the other cats' dishes were clean. By 5 this morning he was definitely back to his normal self because he got up on the bed and woke me up, mainly because he wanted more dry cat food. It was nice to see, but at least when he was still drugged up he left me alone and I could get some sleep.

Nothing to do but wait

2006-12-29T19:56:00.000-08:00

It has turned out be a really bad end of the year for us. Yesterday A had some sudden medical problems come up and ended up at the urgent care clinic because her doctor's office could get her in and felt she needed to be seen immediately. We're still waiting on some of the tests to come back, but the initial ones only showed low sodium. Then to add to that, I noticed a lump on Scooter's chin last night and so he went into the vet today. The vet isn't sure what the lump is beyond it not being an abscess or hematoma so Scooter will go in next Wednesday to be sedates have x-rays taken and have a biopsy done. The vet said we won't really know if it's serious or not until all that is done. He said it is a good sign that Scooter is eating and drinking normally and acting normally. Well, as normal as Scooter can act. He's an odd cat with a lot of little quirks.) I ended up spending most of last night hugging Mr. Gobbly and trying to keep from doing too much what-iffing. Of course it didn't work and I've been walking around in a bit of a fog since then. The only things I have to hold onto is the fact that we don't have a firm diagnosis and Scooter survived a head injury no one thought he would.

Christmas wrap up

2006-12-26T18:19:00.000-08:00

Christmas went very well. I enjoy giving gifts as much as I like getting gifts, so a lot of the fun is waiting to see what people think of the gifts I've found for them. The large, intricate pop-up books, one on dinosaurs and one on sharks, we got for my niece were a big hit. Well, at least for as long as anything holds the attention of a four year old. We adults did not exchange large gifts, we just did stocking stuffers but that was fun, trying to find little things that we thought the others would like. I really did well for the guys on that with wide selection of tools.

A was really surprised by some of the things we got for her especially the replacement coco maker,an addition to her Anubis collection a bunch of software and the purple lanyard with parrot charm that I had made for her. E was really surprised by a number of things we got him, particularly the bathrobe (A's idea), the new travel kit (my idea) and the amount of software we got for him.

I got. . .well I got what I really wanted plus a few surprises. I got the usual stocking stuffers, particularly really nice socks from my mother and a selection of bath stuff and hand cream my sister swears is the best ever. E had warned me that he hadn't got me a lot of gifts but he thought I would really like them, so I was a bit surprised to see the number of gifts that I had. It turns out that a few were supposed to go in my stocking but didn't fit so they got wrapped. There was also the not quite a gift card which was money taped to the inside of a card, which was put in a Chef Boyardee pizza kit box, which was then wrapped and put in a gift bag. (Yeah, we don't do gag gifts in my family, we do gag wrapping.) The best part was the two gifts themselves though. I got the 30 GB iPod I had asked for (and didn't expect to get at all because of the cost). E ordered it from Apple directly so he had it engraved with my name and got it in black, of course. The other gift, well for it to make sense is going to take a bit of back story. A few months ago I had found this picture and just fell in love with it. For one I have always been into dinosaurs and the idea of a raptor with a beloved stuffed animal appealed to my sense of the absurd. Yesterday I was particularly intrigued with a very light present, I joked that it a box of air. It ended up being a stuffed T-Rex and as I pulled it out of the box E said "And now you have your own Mr. Gobbly." That's really one of thing I have always loved about him, he is able to come up with unique and absolutely perfect gifts.

Viva Las Vegas (part 2)

2006-12-21T10:07:00.000-08:00

The original plan for Tuesday was that we were going to go off strip and end up at the Rio because we had a coupon that was for one of their shows plus $10 off their seafood buffet. We ran into a snag when E re-read the coupon and noiced that the coupon wasn't good on Tuesdays because the show was dark that day. We already had plans for Wednesday night which meant that we were left with the choice of not going to a show that night or trying to find a different one that was running. E pulled out his laptop and hopped on the internet to go to the LVA site to look up the list of available shows there. I have been wanting to see one of the Cirque du Soleil shows for some time now so I suggested one of them. E hemmed and hawed, like he has when I've suggested it in the past, but I pushed a bit more and he went to look online at the tickets for Ka. After a bit of waffling on how much we wanted to spend E went with the best tickets available for the late show. I will admit when we got to the theater I was a bit apprehensive because we were directed into the lines to go in by a lady in costume, and the lobby area was full of people in costumes almost doing a pre-show show. I started to think it was going to either be absolutely amazing or really cheesy. We didn't have to wait very long, and the doors to the theater proper opened after one of the costumed characters announced "Travellers form all nations, I welcome you to the village of Ka". The knot of people began to move through the doors and fell silent. When we walked through into the theater it was like walking into a Myst game. There were metal towers connected by different walkways and connected to short towers that came down from the ceiling on both sides of the ampitheater. The stage area also had similar towers on each side. and was open except for a walkway that ran around the front edge of the stage. While we were waiting for the show to start, gouts of flame and puffs of smoke shot up from the void. Part of the fun while waiting was watching the ushers, they were all in costume and actors in their own right. The tickets had said that you had to be in your seats by 9:15, and right about that time things started to happen. I first noticed a figure on one of the towers pulling a bucket up out of the void. E noticed a figure on a platform below the towers to our left. They started to yell at each other and then other figures began to appear to take buckets from the figure I saw and carry them along the walkways between the towers. The yelling continued between the original figures and the new ones and eventually there were figures perched on the railings between the seating sections. And then. . .well we're reaching the end of my ability to describe the show in any coherant fashion. There was too much going on and too many things to try to describe. The basics are that the show follows the adventures of a set of twins trying to find each other and win back their kingdom. The costume and makeup design was heavily influenced by the Chinese and Japanese cultures and probably other Asian cultures as well but I wasn't able to recognise those influences. I spent most of the show sitting there with my mouth open and I would definitely see it again because there was so much going on that I'm sure I missed something. It was absolutely amazing.

On Wednesday morning I went to he spa for my hot stone massage and in the afternoon we took advantage of another coupon and went to see the Mac King comedy magic show. It was somewhat free, you got in after paying for one over priced drink, but that meant we got to see a very good show for $19.98. It was a fantastic show, Mac King is an excellent magician and very funny, and I prefer his style of magic show over the overly pretentious ones. Wednesday night we met up with one of E's co-workers , B, and his wife for dinner. Since B is really into Star Trek we took them to Quark's at the Hilton for dinner and drinks. We then went back to the Imperial Palace to do a bit of gambling.

Our flight home was Thursday night, so we had a little bit of time to do things after we checked out of the hotel. We went over to the Forum Shops to get lunch and then wandered over to the Bellagio to see the conservatory which was beautiful. It was the one thing we saw where we could take pictures and we didn't have the camera with us. Luckily I have a camera phone and was able to get a few pictures. Since this is getting a bit long I'll post those separately later today. After that it was back to the IP to gamble a bit before we went to the airport. The final cab ride was quite interesting, the driver took a a back route and we had a few tense moments as he dodged around trucks and through small gaps in traffic. He got usthere in record time, and in one piece and we were off to check in with Frontier and wait for our flight. We finally made it home a bit before midnight.

Viva Las Vegas! (part 1)

2006-12-16T15:57:00.000-08:00

I'm back from our Vegas vacation and I think I'm caught up with most of my email and such. I'm still working on getting housework done and trying to get back in the swing of normal life.

It was definitely a fun trip as always, but we did a few different things this time. We stayed at the Imperial Palace which is mid strip and for a long time was one of the last few independent casinos left. It's since been purchased by Harrah's, but it hasn't changed much. Over the last few years we had accumulated a pretty good amount of points in our players card account so we got a really good deal on the hotel room, the first three nights free, and then ended up using our comp dollars to pay for the final night. The hotel room wasn't bad at all beyond being a bit small. I do have to say that the bed was one of the more comfortable hotel beds I've slept in and the water pressure in the shower was excellent, even with being on the 16th floor. (Keep in mind though that E and I are not too picky about hotel rooms, we just want a clean room with a bed and a shower. I expect that the rooms at the IP wouldn't work for everyone.) Sunday after we got settled in we wandered over to Caesars Palace to wander through the Forum Shops and made our reservations for dinner for Monday night. Then we did our usual first night in Vegas dinner at Hofbrau Haus and then went over to the Hard Rock casino for a bit of gambling. The Pocketbook of Values E gets with his membership to the Las Vegas Advisor has a coupon for $10 in free machine play on certain machines that I like to use. It doesn't work in a lot of the slot machines, but it does work in the video poker machines which is just fine with me because I can get a lot of play out of that $10 at video poker.

Monday morning we got up and hopped on the monorail to go down to Mandalay Bay to eat at House of Blues (excellent food, and a place we discovered due to a coupon) because we had some shopping to do down on that end of the strip. After breakfast we walked back over to Luxor through Mandalay Place and stumbled on a fun little shop, Lush Puppy. It's a hip little store with stuff for dogs and cats and their people which gets big points in my book for having a store dog. We, of course, had to get stuff for the animals and then I found a great little book the cat owner's manual which has turned out to be informative and a very fun read. Unfortunately, the rest of the shopping didn't go quite as well. A had asked us to look for a replacement for one of her Anubis statutes that was damaged and we couldn't find a single one. Then we walked back through Excalibur so I could stop at a little jewelry store there I liked and discovered that it had changed. That was particularly disappointing because I have started getting one piece of really nice jewelry during our Vegas trip and the old store had carried the type of jewelry I like. We headed back to the IP and gambled for a bit before we went over to Caesars Palace for dinner. We got there a bit early, so I talked E into go back to a jewelry shop I had seen in the Forum Shops the night before, Australian Gems. Back in the back they had one case of opal and silver jewelry, all of which was 40% off regular price, and I found the perfect bracelet so I still ended up getting my piece of jewelry. Dinner that night was at Hyakumi which was a new experience for me. E had gone there last month when he was at Caesars for a conference and had talked it up so much I thought it would be fun to try for our really nice meal. We did the Teppan Yaki-style meal and it was amazing. It took around an hour and a half to two hours long and you start with an appetizer of tiger shrimp and vegetables cooked in front of you on the hot plate, followed by soup, then by a cucumber salad and then the main course which was chicken, steak and lobster cooked on the hot plate with vegetables. The steak and lobster were the best I have ever had, perfectly cooked and tender enough that they seemed to melt in your mouth. The meal ended with green tea and strawberry ice cream. It was fantastic, the food was perfect and the pace of the meal was great because we had plenty of time to really enjoy the meal without feeling rushed. It's definitely something I want to do again.

A voice from above

2006-12-09T11:23:00.000-08:00

One of the cats, Camille, is very attuned to people coughing and sniffling and being sick particularly at night. If she hears you coughing she has to come check on you and she has a very distinctive little mew she makes when she's doing it. Last week when I was so sick I had a coughing fit while laying in bed one night and as expected heard Camille, but it wasn't from on the bed next to me. It took a few minutes, but I finally figured out that she was on the top of the headboard above me. My first thought was that I hoped she didn't jump down into the middle of me like her sister would. When I told E about it he said his first thought would've been, "God?" which struck me as a bit funny although an orange feline god doesn't seem like it would be too bad. Very insistent, and in the way at times, but not too bad.

Oh yeah, I need that on a plane

2006-12-08T18:43:00.000-08:00

E and I will be leaving for our annual trip to Las Vegas on Sunday and in preparation, I have gone out to look at the TSA website to see what the new restrictions on carry on items are. They have a very nice set of charts showing you what can be taken in a carry on or not, and I learned a few things. I had no idea it was ok to take pliers under 7 inches in length on a plane in your carry on. That's good for me to know if I ever have to travel with my jewelry making supplies. Some of the other things they have listed really make me wonder, because you know they are one the list because someone tried to take them them on a plane. There is an entire section on tools and it includes axes, hatchets, crowbars, hammers, drills and drill bits (including cordless portable power drills) and saws (including cordless portable power saws). Now, even prior to 9/11, why would anyone think it was a good idea to take power tools or a cattle pod on a plane in your carry on? I know it's rough dealing with the crowds, but what use would a cattle prod be? And power tools, guess it's useful if you plan on doing some carpentry projects during your flight, but otherwise it doesn't make sense to take something that bulky on a plane as a carry on? Under food there are a lot of things that make sense because they are common snack foods, but then you have whipped cream listed. Even on a flight with a meal, what would be the purpose of bringing whipped cream in your carry on?

In the end it really makes me wonder what kind of weird things security people at airports run into. And it makes me wonder if they end up wondering what people were thinking at the end of the day.

A note in passing

2006-12-06T20:49:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry I haven't been really good about posting lately. We leave for vacation this coming Sunday and I'm running around like a madwoman trying to get ready. Getting sick last week really set me back both at home and at work so I haven't had much chance to post or work on any of my projects. (And of course, I took on a couple of projects that have to be done before we leave. I have got to get better about saying no to these things.)

Anyway, hopefully I can post something else before we leave especially since I have some funny things that have happened or that I noticed. I'd like to post about some of them before I forget them completely.

Commercials that set me on edge

2006-11-29T15:27:00.000-08:00

I'm home sick again today and that means I've been watching a good amount of daytime TV. In doing that I've been reminded of couple of things.

The first is that I a profoundly grateful for the fact that we have digital cable because it means that I can watch the type of shows I prefer when I'm home sick.

The second is that I hate most jewelry store commercials with a white hot burning hatred. I hate the implication that all women want diamond jewelry and that the only way a man can show his love is by giving the woman/women in his life is to give them diamonds. Here's a news flash folks, not all women like diamonds and some of us prefer to have our loved ones pick gifts based on what they know we would like rather than a guilt trip from a jewelry store. I also hate the idea that the jewelry from one store is somehow superior to what you'd get anywhere else. Unless you are getting a custom piece that you have commissioned there isn't going to be that much difference. The most important thing is that you find the right gift based on what you know a person will like, no matter what that gift is.

Observations on cats IV

2006-11-28T13:21:00.000-08:00

Cats want to be completely involved in everything you do. I'm home sick today and decided to inhale steam to try to reduce the pressure in my sinuses. I got myself set up over the bowl of hot water with a towel over my head and was about halfway through when Cami joined me and insisted on laying on the towel. Nowthat I've stopped she has gotten complete comfortable ad islaying here purring.

Stop picking!

2006-11-26T12:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon was much more exciting than I had wanted it to be. A few weeks ago I had damaged the nail on my left thumb at the bottom down by the cuticle and it ended up with a detatched portion. I had carefully trimmed off the detatched portion and thought things were going well because the surface underneath was a bit irritated but still hard. This last week, that layer got rough and irritated and I started picking at it (yes I know I shouldn't, it's the worst of my odd little compulsions) and then it got caught on something and some tore off. The area then got inflamed and distended and by yesterday was very swollen and sore. I was concerned that it was getting infected so we went into the Urgent Care clinic. I had forgotten the interesting range of people you see in the waiting room there. Eventually I made it back to see the doctor and it turns out there were a number of things going on. The first was that the hard layer I had noticed when I first took the damaged portion of the nail off was actually the bottom layer of the nail. When that got damaged and torn this week it irritated everything underneath which caused swelling and blood and other stuff also started collecting which is what caused the area to get distended. I agreed to let her to lift the swollen area and lance it which was an interesting experience. She did a digital block, which is doing injections of a numbing agent at each side of the base of the finger, and after everything was numb went in and did the draining. She said it looked like it was starting to get infected, so I left with a prescription for antibiotics, a dressing that made my thumb look like a small sausage and instruction to change bandages twice a day unless it got wet, and soak the thumb when I do the change.

So, what have I learned from this?

1. The main thing is the title of this post: don't pick! If I'd left it alone I would've been just fine and I could've skipped this whole ordeal.

2. A digital block takes a long time to completely wear off. I was pretty impressed with how good my thumb felt a few hours afterwards, what I didn't realize is that the digital block hadn't completely worn off, when it did my thumb felt like someone had smashed it multiple times with a sledgehammer. Thankfully it feels a lot better today.

3. It's really hard to soak a portion of your hand in warm water when you have cats in the house. I had to keep shooing Rogue away from the water, she seemed to thing it was there for her to drink and play with. The good thing is that the soaking seems to reduce the pressure even if I do have to have feline supervision to do it.

4. It is really hard to do much of anything, particularly make dinner, with your thumb wrapped up to look like a small sausage.

Weird weekend

2006-11-12T19:31:00.000-08:00

Friday was nice, I slept in, got some errands run and got a good amount of housework done. Saturday I got up at my normal work time and went down to a gem show with some friends. Today I slept in and finished up the housework. At this point my inner clock is completely out of whack. On top of that I ran out of steam this afternoon and didn't end up working on any projects at all. Hopefully I can get something worked on some time this week. I really have got to get back into working on jewelry in particular, because we have so many materials at this point. I also had some sewing I wanted to get done too. I'm just going to have to get myself organized and just get started on things I guess.

The short weeks season

2006-11-09T20:27:00.000-08:00

Short work weeks that is. Saturday is Veteran's Day which means that as a state government employee I get Friday off. Then in two weeks we have Thursday off for Thanksgiving, then in a little over 4 weeks we have Monday the 25th off, a week later we have January 1st off and then a couple of weeks later we have Equality Day (Martin Luther King Day) off. Then there are no short weeks until Memorial Day in May. I like having the occasional short week, but it is just crazy this time of year. Add to that our annual Vegas vacation in December and I end up feeling like I will never get caught up at work. The only saving grace is that the day after Thanksgiving ends up being very quiet because people assume we are closed when we aren't and I can get a lot done then.

No big exciting plans for the day off, I have some errands to run, and a bit of early Christmas shopping to work on and then housework and work on some projects for my Etsy store. I hope things will start to sell there, but again I feel like I am in a gulf between trendy, hip handmade items and needlepoint canvas tissue box covers. Maybe I can be a trend setter of sorts, which is really a scary thought, or maybe just open things up for other people. Who knows, but at this point it's nice to get back into working with leather, I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it. I also need to get back into working on jewelry, come up with a project for the snopester craft challenge since I initiated the whole thing, plus I'd like to work out away to do a beaded lanyard for my badge for work. On the lanyard I have a pretty good idea of how I'm going to make it, but I need to figure out a couple of things. The first is how how the badge will attach, but I have orders some findings that should work, I'll just need to experiment. The second is coming up with a release for it so it falls off if it hooks on something or someone grabs it. That leaves me in the odd position of trying to find a clasp that will fail, which is the exact opposite of what you look for in a jewelry clasp. I'm going down to another gem and mineral show on Saturday, I'm hoping to get some different styles of clasps that I can test. Once I start working on the lanyard project I will, of course, discuss the process over on my project blog.

Observations on cats III

2006-11-05T17:56:00.000-08:00

It's not easy to do crafts that require laying out and cutting the materials when you have cats in the house. I didn't get the camera fast enough to get a picture of Cleo laying with her tail across the ruler and suede. She also laid next to me while I glued the lining onto the tooling leather pieces. I was a bit worried about the glue, but she didn't do much beyond sniff in the general direction of the bottle. Of course the lining pieces have cat hair on them now.

Never mind how it happened

2006-10-31T21:12:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I last posted. I was sick last week and E was sick the week before and it threw everything off. I think I'm finally getting caught back up, but since this is one of those times when we get paid mid week, we're rapidly running out of food so we have to go to the store tomrrow night, which means no serious blogging until the weekend most likely.

One odd little thing that has come up recently is that I've sudden gotten the urge to buy several pieces of art. One of them I understand why I like it so much, it looks like Scooter. The others aren't quite so straightforward. One is because the juxtaposition of elements is silly and just strikes me the right way. The third one does that as well but there's a bit more to it. To explain it I'll need to link to the picture which is here. It definitely stikes the silly side of me, but the more important part is that I identify very strongly with the hamster that is tangled up in the toaster cord. Why? Well I'm a klutz and I seem to have a chaos field, and I can completely see that happening to me. If there's money left after the bills are paid and groceries bought I will have to get that one

Observations on cats II

2006-10-21T20:01:00.000-07:00

Cats are not much help when you are trying to take pictures of the jewelry you've made. (This picture is an improvement over the one where Whiskey had her whole head in the way.)

Cold and snowy

2006-10-17T19:36:00.000-07:00

The forcast for today said snow and the weather actually paid attention for a change. It ended up alternating between really fine flakes and huge, fluffy looking flakes, but it did snow most of the day. The dog seems a bit irriated with the fact that we got her trimmed last month so she can't lounge out in the snow, but in the end it's a good thing. (She is a Husky/Shepard mix and her undercoat grown much quicker than the top coat and tangles and mats as it goes. )

My big excitement for the day was the fact that my latest order from Lands End came in today so I get to try out my new winter coat tomorrow. Like any other coat it makes me look a bit bulky but it seems like it is going to be nice and warm, plus it is a bit longer which will save me from ending up with a cold wet butt from sitting in the snow that fell on the seat of the truck when I opened the door. Another one of the items I got is a corduroy cardigan style jacket which will be nice for work since they seem to have decided this winter the office will be cold. I'm not complaining too loudly though because I would prefer it over how warm they had it last year. I never ended up wearing any of my sweaters, and I had almost forgotten that I had them. I can tolerate dressing for a cold office if it's also cold outside, it's hard to get the right balance then it's freezing outside and inside it feels like summer.

The first sign of the holiday season

2006-10-16T21:22:00.000-07:00

I picked up the mail today to discover my portion was made up of 7 catalogs and one piece of junk mail. That's what tells me we are coming up on the winter holiday season, the annual catalog avalanche. I know I only have a short period of time to get the shelf I keep catalogs on cleaned out before I get completely buried. I do the majority of my shopping online so I only need 3 to 4 catalogs from a given company in a year just so I get notified of new products each season. There are a couple of companies that seem to send me catalogs every week. It's just crazy.

Can you be a jewelry geek?

2006-10-07T21:09:00.000-07:00

I'm just wondering because I get excited about getting jewelry related stuff the same way a gaming geek gets excited about the latest book or a computer geek gets excited by the newest computer gadget. This time I'm excited because my jeweler's loup came in. It's not top of the line, but it does what I needed it to do. In the process of doing some research on mahjong tiles last month I came across several discussions on how to tell bone tiles from ivory tiles. Apparently a lot of old bone mahjong tiles are passed off as ivory and there are pretty specific ways of telling the two apart. This got me to thinking about the pieces of a bracelet Mom had given me years ago. She had gotten it as a gift from someone who had bought it in Hawaii and had told her that it was made of ivory. She had worn it up until the elastic in it broke, and then the ivory ban came into effect and she left it in her jewelry box. At some point she gave it to me, and I had held onto the pieces not sure what to do with them so they got stuck in a box and put in the back room. I dug them out and took a closer look at them using the criteria I had found and wasn't able to tell for sure, so I ordered the loup. Using it I am now sure that those are high quality bone carvings rather than ivory which means I can actually use them in pieces. I guess that means I better get my act together and start working on stuff again.

October already

2006-10-01T20:56:00.000-07:00

Wow, how time flies. And how behind I still am on my list of projects, plus I have two jewelry commissions, one of which has to be done byefore Christmas. E and I went up to Blackhawk at the end of last week and stopped by Tandy on our way home so I now have the buckle to work on the belt I promised A some time ago. I also ended up getting a belt cellphone case for E so which pute me a bit more behind project wise, but it's an easy kit and something I should be able to get done in a weekend. The commissions I have worked out for the most part in my mind so I just need to sit down and work on them. Of course there are other things I need to get to work on like sorting through all of my craft supplies in the back room and decicing what is worth keeping. I already started this weekend with some of the old beads I had, the only problem is that they are small so I didn't gain a lot of room. It's a start at least and it will get easier when we get the door for the closet. I also need to get both E and I motivated so we can go through the food storage area and get rid of the old stuff and get him going on moving his computer down into the basement.

A normal Sunday afternoon

2006-09-24T15:24:00.000-07:00

It's the usual Sunday afternoon here, working on housework and puttering around on the web which is nice after all the excitement last weekend. I got finished counting beads yesterday, with help from A who sorted and weighed the bag 'o mixed silver beads. I made the final entries in the spread sheet this morning. The bad part of all of it is that I'm pretty tired of looking at beads so I really don't want to work on anything. Hopefully that feeling will pass because we have a lot of new materials to use up.

I'm adding a post on some earrings I made earlier in the month to my project blog today too.

I survived

2006-09-20T17:06:00.000-07:00

We went to the bead show and the gem and mineral show this last weekend and as always it was an experience. We stopped by the bead show first thing on Saturday since it was on our way into town. It take place in a hotel and the vendors are spread out between the ballroom, the atrium, and a side meeting room plus there is an entire hall of hotel rooms that have vendors set up in them. Last year we had wandered around and grabbed stuff that looked cool, which meant that we didn't always get the best deals. This time we did much better at doing some comparison shopping and looking for new and unusual beads. After we got done there we went to the gem and mineral show for a few hours. Again we did pretty well at finding some good deals and I found bracelets made out of bone Mahjong tiles strung on elastic that I can take apart and work into my own jewelry. The next morning we headed back to the gem and mineral show. Again we found some wonderful deals, although I think that had less to do with good comparison shopping and more to do with it being the last day of the show.

It's always interesting to me to go to these shows because it seems to be it's own little world. Have you ever seen shows on the diamond trade, with deals being sealed with a handshake and that's all? It is almost like that. If you pay with a credit card you end up with at least that receipt, but if you pay with cash, you are lucky to get an adding machine receipt. Usually what happens is they write it on the bag or you get nothing at all. Thankfully we only had one with nothing at all and I remember the price on that. This is the reason why it is taking me forever to try to get all of the new stone beads inventoried, because unless I remember what was a specific price, or we have one of the rare itemized receipts I have to sort out what cost what. The pearls are a bit better because they tended to be the same price per strand. I'm still not sure how the silver will be since it is by weight. I think it will be a complete pain to sort, but will be easy to work the price out on. Time will tell on that though.

It's been a while

2006-09-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

Lots of odds and ends of things going on here. I had a leather project that I finished up last week and that kept me pretty busy. I've also been doing some experimenting with using silver wire for jewelry, but I need to get more materials and better tools to do more with that. Next weekend is the Gem and Mineral Show and Bead Renaissance show in Denver so we will have a fun weekend of shopping for stuff for the business and I'm hoping to find what I need there. If not I've located some of it on the internet and order it when we get home.

This weekend I'll be doing some canning. It doesn't look like it was a good year for pickling cucumbers, all I could find at the farmer's market today were small ones. I got a quarter bushel of the cucumbers and I'm expecting 8 to 10 jars out of it. Thankfully I had already done 5 quarts of pickles using cucumbers from our garden, and we have another batch that will be ready soon, so I think we should end up with a decent number of jars. I've decided that I like doing it in smaller amounts like this, it is a lot less stress and work for me so we may end up planing one garden plot of pickling cucumbers next year so I can just do a few jars at a time.

The downside to being focused

2006-08-30T20:19:00.000-07:00

One of my greatest strengths has always been that I have the ability to get really focused on a project and see it through to the end. In the past it meant that I'd get done, go through a let down period, maybe be a bit sore, need a bit more sleep and be fine the next day. Now it means that I am completelywiped out and that I've probably worked past the point that I should. I hadn't really thought about it until tonight when I worked on painting part of my current project. I was only painting a small portion, but right now, I'm exhausted, my eyes feel both glazed and sanded at the same time, my right hand has settled into being warm and very achy (and I know it is going to really stiffen up by tomorrow morning) and my left ankle is sore because I sat with it hooked behind my right andkle for way to long. Now that I've realized this I need to realize it is the trade-off for continuing to do my crafts and plan for it.

With that, I need to go grab a painkiller and get ready for bed so I'm not a complete zombie at work tomorrow. I hope my stash of anti-inflammatories and painkillers at work is full.

Observations on my cats

2006-08-27T18:45:00.000-07:00

It's been interesting being the one here at the house all the time with the cats. It is a rare time when I am not under feline supervision. (I'm not right now come to think of it, but it appears to be pre-dinner naptime.) A lot of the time it entails sitting on my desk watching me work or getting in the middle of what I'm doing to get attention, but today Rouge got up on my shoulder and laid across my neck while I was at the sink washing dishes. I'm sure it has to do with her general fascination with water, but it was a bit weird having little head next my left ear watching my every move.

Milestones

2006-08-22T17:43:00.000-07:00

I generally don't do a very good job of keeping track of milestones. I can barely remember the date E and I got married much less how many years we've been married and I only remember his birthday because of some song lyrics. Very occasionally a milestone pops up into my consciousness that really strikes me. That happened yesterday when I realized that Sunday the 20th was the the fifth anniversary of me starting at this job. It made me think back a bit over the past 5 years and a few things really struck me. The first is how far I've come in that time. I have a job I like, with a good salary and a lot of stability. The second is how grateful I am that things worked out the way they did. I guess to really be able to explain why I need to give a bit of background. My previous job was as a travel agent in a call center and while I had enjoyed it to begin with, the fact that we had really unrealistic goals and an atmosphere where the average worker was never rewarded had really started to wear on me. I was starting to reach my breaking point and get ready to look for a new job but hadn't quite gotten there when we were called into a meeting where it was announced that our call center was being closed in 3 months. My first thought, which I guess is completely natural, was to think that it couldn't be happening. Luckily I went through that stage for maybe 5 or 10 minutes and then snapped out of it. It was like I heard someone saying to me 'This is really happening and you need to figure out what you're going to do' and I took it seriously. A lot of my co-workers went to the bar for a drink after the announcement, when they asked me if I wanted to join them I said no and came home to dust off my resume and start looking. It still took me 2 months after that job was over to start this job as a contact employee, but it all worked out in the end. I don't think I would be where I am now if I hadn't have gotten that big cosmic kick in the ass to go do something about getting a better job, and for that I'm really grateful.

More observations on animals

2006-08-20T11:18:00.000-07:00

I recently realized that I don't really know much about the people in my neighborhood but I definitely know the pets. The event that really brought this home was noticing that one of the dogs hadn't been around for a while. The people kitty corner across the street from us (next to the duplex with the dog I talked about a few entries ago) have had a small fluffy white dog and a grey tomcat for as long as we have lived here which is getting close to 10 years now. The other day I noticed a black dachshund in their yard and realized that I hadn't seen the white dog for a while. The white fuzzy dog had to be at least 9 years old, if not older, so it isn't surprising to think that it has died, but it was a bit of a shock to notice the change in my animal neighbors.

On the downhill side

2006-08-16T20:19:00.000-07:00

I started out the week with a few bad joint days, but that is starting to clear up and I have a nice quiet weekend to look forward to. The only down side is that my allergies seem to be in full swing. Hopefully I'll be a bit more up to posting as I get towards the end of the week. Right now between the end of the joint inflammation and the allergies I'm pretty foggy.

Well that's over with

2006-08-12T19:00:00.000-07:00

The craft show was today and it went OK. We didn't have a huge amount of sales but a lot of people stopped by. E thinks part of the problem is that it isn't obvious that we are using silver, precious and semi-precious stone beads, especially when there were two other booths with bead jewelry that was mainly from glass beads. A thought part of the problem is that we were using new displays and people didn't feel as inclined to look at things. At this point I'm wondering if it doesn' t have to do with the location we set up at. Of course, it could also have nothing to do with any of this. I just find it very frustrating that people don't have a problem with paying a lot of money for a piece of jewelry from a catalog or in a store but they don't seem to want to buy it directly from the craftsperson for even a fraction of the price.

Much better day

2006-08-11T13:23:00.000-07:00

Today has bee much more productive than last night. I slept in a bit, had a nice relaxing few cups of coffee this morning and got 3 more bracelets made. I'm planning on working on earrings this afternoon when A comes over. The only thing I really have left to worry about for tomorrow is getting the rest of the stuff packing and I may need E to dig a plastic bin out of the basement for that.

I'm going to be putting another batch of pictures up on my project blog today too and I hope to get at least on picture taken tonight of the triple stand aquamarine and silver bracelet I made early in the week. That's one I want to make for myself now, but I have to wait for the silver beads I ordered to come in since we didn't have enough left. (Plus the design uses enough of them that I'm not comfortable taking that many away from the business. I bought this batch of beads myself and I'll just use what I need and give the rest to the business.)

Procrastinating

2006-08-10T19:10:00.000-07:00

I really need to be working on stuff for Saturday but I'm not. I just can't get fired up to do any of it. I'm sure part of it is the stress and part is that I'm keyed up from my day at work but it's a bit annoying because I've only gotten one piece made this whole week. I do have all day tomorrow, but I'd really like to get some more done tonight.

I guess part of the edginess could have to do with the fact that E and A are flying back from Vegas tonight and I'm a nervouse about that with the big terrorism scare. Yes, I know it had to do with flights originating in the UK and I know that Vegas wasn't on the list of destinations. This is like my fear of unnaturally large spiders, it's not rational at all but I am freaked out. I think I'm going to go have some of the brandy filled chocolates I've been hoarding. (A very funny aside on those. I had been talking about them with my supervisor around Christmas one year and we ended up drawing each other in the gift exchange and got each other a box. She ended up opening her box to share at work and we all ended up being a wee bit buzzed the rest of the day. My box came home and has sat in the fridge for emergencies. Like tonight.) If they don't work I may have to work up to a cider or something. they should help though, and they have a lot of good memories attached to them.

Hopefully they'll bring a bit of inspiration too.

Update: The brandy filled chocolates helped relax me, but now I'm troo relaxed so I gave up on working on stuff tonight. I did add more pictures to my project blog though.

Observations on animals

2006-08-08T17:39:00.000-07:00

I came home from work today to discover that the birds had partially chewed apart one of their toys. Parrots are pretty destructive so I wasn't surprised about the destruction, just how fast they had done it because the toy was mostly intact this morning. It's been fun having them here. A has been working on encouraging whistling and cheeping over sqwaking, so I've spent a lot of time responding to their whistling with my own whistling. I don't always whistle very well so I expect they think I have an awful accent, but it's interesting because I feel like we're having a conversation.

In other animal related observations, I've realized what the dog across the street was trying to say. I suppose I should back up a little bit. Our house is on a corner and directly across the street is a duplex. It's front door faces the cross street so we face the side of it. In the past couple of months new people moved into that side and they have a medium to large sized dog that has a Shepard/Akita sort of look. He was in a dog run and spent most of his time barking. He used to bark at me when I walked into the front yard but I could get him to calm down by saying something. Recently I've noticed that he's had free run of the yard if his people are at home and he doesn't seem to bark as much. I'm starting to think when he was barking before he was saying "Hey! Hey, you! You with the opposable thumbs! You wanna come over and open this gate for me!?!?"

Notes from the edge of nowhere

Farewell sw. . .well. . .somewhat grumpy cat

Quiet Saturday night with Zombie Cat

I'm ready for my close up. . .

Well that was quick

Friday night kitty picture

Random thoughts from the last two weeks

New member of the family

Stirring things up

Dispatches from the migraine front

Gratuitous cat pictures

Square peg

Bad Taste?

But wait, there's more. . .

Is it wrong?

Sooo. . .

Iron Crafter

Random shopping

Garden plots gone wild

Well. . .

Aftermath

Farewell my diamond in the rough

Maybe not

Well. . .

Blerg

Darkness Darkness

Holiday shopping

Qandry

Uh. . .what happened to my hair?

Medicated for your safety. . .more or less

Do I or don't I. . .

No wonder I feel lousy

Decisions, decisions

*Sigh*

A few random thoughts in passing

I survived

Eating like a bird

F*** cancer

How?

Melting

Things from my childhood

Visitors

Vegas

Signs of Summer

Random theories

First of the month blues

Memorial Day part II

Memo to me. . .

Memorial Day

Well, that was fun (an update of sorts)

Oh #@%&!!!!!

A mellow Sunday

On my own again

Yes, I know

This post brought to you by the random setting on my iPod

Waiting

I survived!

Scooter's big adventure

Forgot to mention

Ode to a lumpy cat

Rights vs. Expectations

Well

Talking to cats

Just a little wind

It's been a while

Why do I do it?

Ouch

A quick update

Scooter update

This is your cat. . .this is your cat on drugs

Nothing to do but wait

Christmas wrap up

Viva Las Vegas (part 2)

Viva Las Vegas! (part 1)

A voice from above

Oh yeah, I need that on a plane

A note in passing

Commercials that set me on edge

Observations on cats IV

Stop picking!

Sigh