Here We Go Again

Starting another home improvement project tomorrow. We're not so stupid as to think we could do this ourselves. Someone who knows what he is doing will be performing the work. This time it is the downstairs bathroom. Totally gutting it and starting over. No, we never learn. And yes, we think this will be complete in time for the family invasion over Thanksgiving. Here we go again!

Silvio!

It wasn't difficult to choose which cat to feature on this week's Friday CatBlogging post...

Silvio continues to improve. He's back to his usual mischievous self this morning.

An update to the last update, plus an unrelated update.

I got home last night and was finally able to see Silvio. He was a bit standoffish with me. Other than that and his peeing tiny amounts very frequently, he seemed normal to me. Normal enough to be getting into everything and bugging the other cats. He warmed up to me overnight and decided to be snuggly once it got cold.

The other big update is that I PASSED PART 2 OF THE BOARD EXAM!! You know... the one I spent all summer studying for. Just got the letter today. One more test to go -- an oral exam given in the spring of next year.

We've got a lot of other stuff going on. Trying to get ready for a party we're hosting on Saturday, and lots more to do on that front. I had some catching up to do at work as well. I'll get around to your blogs again soon, I promise. But it might be Sunday before it happens. Gotta run - we're off to Trader Joe's to stock up on party stuff.



10:10pm An update to these updates: OUT OF GAS!!! Drove around all over and passed about eight gas stations. No one has any gas to sell. I have less than 1/4 tank now, and will of necessity be taking the shuttle in to work tomorrow, which I can catch a few miles from home. Since I have no idea when I will be able to find gas again, I will be driving as little as possible. They say the shortage is panic driven. Well, I totally understand getting panicked when you cannot find any gasoline ANYWHERE. I have never in my life encountered this situation, even after Katrina, when gas was available, just merely expensive. Damn! I'll try again tomorrow morning (maybe some of them get an overnight delivery), but if I can't find any, then I am pretty much grounded until the situation changes. I didn't get gas before my trip because it was so expensive. I figured by the time I got back, it would be nearly back to normal. Looks like my strategy was flawed.

A Quick Update

Silvio came home this afternoon. He's not 100% back to normal with the peeing though. We'll see how it plays out from here. I worry because PDM has to work a long day tomorrow and I am not going to be home to check on him. It wouldn't do any good to have a friend stop in because Silvio would just hide.

That's all I have the energy to write for now. I've been out all day and still need to eat supper (yes, I know it is 10:30pm). I'll blog about it later, but today I saw some old friends - one here in Boston, and the other out in the boonies where I used to live. It was quite the project getting to Southbridge. Walked to the station, took the subway to the airport, then shuttle bus to rental car place, then long drive on the Mass Pike. It was gorgeous and sunny all day long, but somehow I had to drive through torrential rain to return the car to the airport. Weird. At least it stopped by the time I had to walk back to the hotel.

I'm in Boston, and Silvio is still not home.

Silvio started to get blocked again this afternoon, so he is spending the night at the "after hours" vet under observation. Will know more tomorrow. That "turn him into a girl" surgical option is starting to look more likely. We'll see what happens.

Meanwhile, I am in Boston for a conference until Wednesday. Finally got settled in. Nice hotel -- glad I'm not paying for it! (Especially with the cat week we've just had...) Now I am waiting on room service to deliver my very long delayed supper. 5:30pm is a bad time to fly. Too early to eat before you leave, and no decent food available until you land. I'm starving!!

Silvio - not home yet, but OK

He's been at his regular vet since this morning. He will be spending the night there, and might be able to come home tomorrow. They still have to remove his catheter and IV fluid line, x-ray him to check for stones, do some bloodwork to check his kidney function, and see if he is able to urinate on his own. The vet says he was more like himself today -- eating, purring, and making biscuits with his paws. It sounds encouraging. I still worry. Especially since I have to go to Boston tomorrow afternoon and won't get to see him. Terrible timing, but this is a business trip that was planned months ago. More about that in another post... I made sure to book a hotel with free wireless. I'll be there until Wednesday.

Silvio

...is at the emergency vet right now. We came home from work today and noticed that he was lethargic, had weird posture and was wobbly on his back legs, was hunched over the water dish, looked bloated, and seemed to be in pain. Called the after-hours vet, who recommended we bring him in right away. The vet confirmed that he has a urinary blockage, which can be life threatening, so I am glad we did. They have to sedate and catheterize him tonight, and look for the cause of the blockage. Treatment options depend on what they find. If it is bad enough, one option is surgery to turn him into a girl cat. I wish I were kidding. (This should all sound very familiar to nypinta and everyone who read her "Stanley" post last week.)

That's all I know right now. Keep your fingers crossed for the little feller.

UPDATE (9:15pm): The vet just called. He was definitely blocked and they removed it. Bloodwork shows some toxins had built up and his kidney function was affected. Looks like we got him there in time to prevent the worst stuff. We'll have a better idea tomorrow. He will remain sedated and under observation overnight. Our regular vet will take over his care tomorrow morning. We're hoping for no more updates tonight because in this case, "no news is good news." They did mention that he is pretty young to be having these problems and they are likely to recur without some kind of intervention.

My Favorite Headline

Sure, there were a lot of bad news headlines today. It's enough to make you want to hide all your money under the mattress (whatever is left, anyway). But there is other stuff going on in the world. My favorite headline today? This one:

Paul Johnson calls TV announcers ‘morons’

Heh. It's nothin' I hadn't thought of myself. Sports announcers can be total doofuses. (Hmmm, I have no idea how to pluralize or spell "doofus". What I wrote doesn't look right, but you get the drift...) Any time you babble throughout an entire football game, you are bound to say something stupid. Especially those prissy TV announcers. Two games ago, the announcers spent the entire game calling Roddy Jones by the name 'Roddy Smith', in spite of his last name being written in large block letters on the back of his jersey. Idiots. It made me wonder if they were actually watching the game they were calling. This week, they were second-guessing Coach Johnson's strategy and making me very glad they were not on our coaching staff. Because coaches need, you know, balls. Ahem.

One of the good things about college football season is that no matter what else is going on, the football headlines just scream normalcy. The political races are a big sucking cesspool of nasty, and the country's finances are in the shitter, but it'll take a lot more than that to affect college football. For a few blessed hours on Saturday afternoons and evenings all across this country, the players and fans get together and forget that they disagree on anything except football.

Bottle Shock

Saw the movie this weekend at an arthouse theatre. Had a good time, and it made me want to drink some wine. Big surprise, huh? Good thing I planned ahead (because you cannot buy wine in Georgia on Sundays, which is really stupid). I should show a photo of a Napa wine, but I don't have one handy. But this photo does tie in with a line from the movie: once the California wines bested the French wines in a blind taste test, one of the movie characters accurately suggests this this was just the beginning -- soon there would be award winning wines from South America, Australia, and even Africa. It was fun to see the British wine guy out of his element, and even more fun to see those French wine snobs get their comeuppance. The 1970s setting added to the fun of the movie, without it being about that.

Three Points

It was the margin of victory last week, and the margin of defeat today. I'm not happy about the loss, but there is reason for optimism. We never gave up. Never quit. Our coach plays to win rather than playing "not to lose". We were able to stay competitive until the end in spite of committing multiple turnovers in both games. If we can get a handle on the mistakes, especially ball security, we're going to be a very tough team to beat. Overall, the season has gone slightly better than I expected. I figured we'd drop both road games, and by more than three points.

Mox

It's Friday. You know what that means...

Lies!

Thought for the day: You can repeat a lie over and over, but that doesn't make it true.

I'm tired of bullshit.

Some good sources for cutting through the bullshit from both sides: FactCheck and/or PolitiFact. And there is always good ol' Snopes for those viral emails. Get outraged if you must, but not before you check the facts! No sense getting worked up about stuff that isn't remotely true. Be an informed voter. Policy differences are honest differences, and voters should weigh their choices. But those choices ought to be based on solid, factual information, not innuendo, rumors and lies.

Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider is online today. It may be the end of the world, but I feel fine.

For some reason, whenever I try to type "hadron", I accidentally switch the D and the R. Hilarity ensues. I mean, what's not funny about a "large hardon collider"?

Still Raw

If this is your kind of humor, you'll find more here.

New-clear?

No, it's not an acne product. It was the phonetic spelling of "nuclear" used on the teleprompter for the acceptance speech given by a certain veep candidate, in order to avoid a potentially embarrassing pronunciation gaffe. The "hooked on phonics" gimmick successfully prevented the pronunciation error, but the speech writers probably didn't mean to leave it in the transcript released to the media. Oops.

An Ugly Win

Georgia Tech 19
Boston College 16

As Coach Paul Johnson said last week, “I learned a long time ago an ugly win is better than a pretty loss.” He said much the same thing today on the post game radio show.

It was a defensive game on both sides of the ball, with lots of mistakes to go around, but to my surprise Tech came out on top. We fumbled the opening kickoff return and recovered. First play on offense also featured a mistake. There were way too many fumbles today. It was getting ridiculous. But a good Tech defense kept BC settling for field goals, and we finally got enough offense going against a very tough BC defense to get the job done. Plus, we got a safety! That doesn't happen very often and is a lot of fun to watch. Good effort by both teams. We were on pins and needles the entire game. It could have gone either way, and was quite a battle.

Our gathering of friends was fun and the food was tasty (chili dogs and brats). We'll probably head over to the pub later to watch the 8:00 games and have some supper.

THWG!

Get Me The Heck Outta Here!

For a short week, it sure has been awful. Software crisis at work stretching into its second week, working late every day without actually accomplishing the thing I wanted to stay late for, every day a reason I have to come in early in spite of having worked late the day before, equipment malfunctions of every kind, and me being all kinds of tired. This photo shows Zima's way of getting away from it all - namely a bratty Silvio determined to "play". I wish I had a handy rail to climb atop of to get away from all of my problems.

The weekend just HAS to be an improvement. We are having some folks over to watch the Georgia Tech at Boston College game on Saturday. We also have our sights on creating a detailed plan for our next home improvement project (the downstairs bathroom, which will be demolished and rebuilt from scratch, and needs to be completed in time for the Thanksgiving family invasion) and we need to create a menu and music playlist for our next party, coming up in a few weeks.

Lame Excuses For Not Posting

I took the weekend off, and I'm having to work overtime this week to get some machine stuff done after hours. Regular posting to resume soon, I hope. I have some post topics in mind, but the thoughts need to roll around my brain some more before they are ready to share. Plus, so many cat photos... so few Fridays.