Escaping TV's Stifling Grip

We reached the breaking point with our cable finally. We've been paying nearly $130 every month for the enjoyment of 160 channels that we don't watch nor want. Granted, $43 of that bill is our cable modem, with which we cannot part, but the rest is pure fluff. We're dropping down from the package we have now—every channel they offer, including pay channels like HBO—to just the basic stuff, like local channels. The cable guy should be at our house sometime between 2 and 5 (what's with those abnormally long windows of time, anyway?). The net result of this change is an extra $65 in our pockets every month.

All of this is happening much to SD's chagrin; she insists there simply cannot be quality of life without cable. Her biggest sticking point is South Park, which is an awesome show, I agree, but for the past 5 months we've mostly forgotten to watch it. So, really, is not having it available, and not remembering to watch it, all that different? I think that in a month she'll wonder why she was so concerned about it in the first place.

Bad, Bad Pet Owners

WARNING: IF YOU'RE SICK OF HEARING ABOUT MY CAT, SKIP THIS POST!

I am the worst pet owner on Earth. On Monday morning (the 26th), I gave Annie her medicine (Clavamox, Clindamyacin), but didn't feed her breakfast. We're moving them from twice a day to once a day, just to make it easier.

A half-hour after I administered medicine, the cat started throwing up. She continued to throw up every 45 minutes for the next 5 hours. I was nearly 100% certain that she didn't need to eat with her meds, but I checked the containers just to make sure. It turns out that Clavamox has a ten-day shelf life after you constitute it (it's a powder, and you add water), and that it had expired a day or two before her Monday dose.

I mixed her up a new batch, and she seems to feel just fine. I feel awful though...

Past-Due

It has been 21 days since Ed has posted anything to his blog. I sent him a threatening email, but I'm tempted to refuse him access to the bathroom until he writes something. *hrmph*

Wonderful Weekend

What a great weekend! I managed to come home from work a little earlier than normal on Friday because the building I work in was closed (ruptured water main, or some such nonsense). Ran to the pet store on Friday night, and got a few new fishies (a few more cichlids, feeder fish for the gar, a replacement Oscar for the one that died) and a new rock for the aquarium; looking mighty fine, now.

Saturday morning was slow; made breakfast, lounged around, played some video games. Ed and I did some last minute shopping (he's the WORST procrastinator I've ever met), but that was it. Opened presents on Christmas Eve, but didn't tell SD we had a whole stash in the closet for her. We had an extra dozen presents participating in the Present Relocation Program, and we didn't get authorization to move them to they're new address (1010 Under The Tree Lane) until late Saturday night. Coincidentally, right after SD went to bed. Weird. It was a nice surprise for her, I think. We got her a lot of little fun things, like Play-Doh, light-up Magnetix, cool magnets for her locker at school, etc.

Sunday was more of the same; lounged around, did some laundry. I only left the house on an emergency sweet-and-low acquisition mission. Monday was just like Sunday, so I'm feeling very well rested for this short week at work. I'm sure it'll go fast!

Holiday Dinner

Last night, in the midst of taking care of our little Snaggletoothed Annie, regular day-to-day chores for the house, and prepping for a nice long weekend, we had a little holiday dinner with our friends, whom I will call DBA and TSJ .

Our little group has an odd dynamic. TSJ is Jewish, DBA is Christian (not sure what flavor, precisely), and Ed and I are none of the above. We tried to make our meal well-rounded, and cover a little bit of traditional food for everyone.

We had roast chicken, a nice glazed ham, mashed potatoes, latkes, green beans, stuffing, apple pie, and rugelach. We opened a nice bottle of 1999 Côte de Castillon Bordeaux wine, sat around, and bullshitted for a few hours. It was very pleasant.

They brought SD a very nice scarf, and a large Sponge Bob body pillow thing (the source of many jokes; what do you think about two guys walking around the mall together with a huge Sponge Bob pillow?). Ed got some very cool South Park Cartman slippers (they say "I'm not fat" on the heel of the left slipper, and "I'm big boned!" on the heel of the right...hehehe..). They gave me a really cool foot jet bath massager thing and it came with a parafin hand bath, and then I got a totally kick-ass fondue/s'mores set! Can't wait to try it out.

Last weekend, we gave TSJ his signed copy of Flowers for Algernon, and we gave DBA a DVD player and the three Harry Potter movies that are out.

All in all, a nice start to the holidays!

Something Smells Fishy

So, all the freakin' fish in my 15 gallon tank died. Not long after we brought the new fish home, the swordtail wag died. He didn't look too hot, but I thought it was stress. Then everything else started dying, so now I think it was disease. I'm pretty irked at Petsmart.

We got our 55 gallon tank up and running a couple weekends ago. We have an albino oscar, a needle nose gar, a couple of bumblebee cichlids, a kenyi cichlid, two firemouth cichlids, three giant danios, and a couple of rosy minnows for food. We still need a few more. I'd like to get a couple of piranahs, and possibly a couple red-tailed sharks. Maybe Santa will bring me some!

Sister Visit

My sister Margaret was out for a visit weekend before last and I keep meaning to get a couple of pictures sized and ready, but I never seem to get around to it. With the long weekend coming up I'm pretty sure I'll be able find some time. Just know that a picture post is on the way!

Promises, Promises

I have been totally lazy about updating my blog. I promised myself this morning that I would do a better job of keeping it up-to-date with the latest goings-on. As I told my family, I really don't care if anyone reads this; it's mostly for me, so I know what was happening in my life at any particular time. I'm awful about remembering timelines.

Wild and Crazy Weekend

This weekend was crazy busy! I ended up staying home from work on Friday because I felt awful: running a fever, coughing like crazy, and sore from head to toe. When SD got home from school, she started making preparations for her birthday party, which somehow included ME driving her to the video store. First thing Saturday morning we had to go get the RV from the dealership; their service department fixed the bulge in the water tank for us. Then, straight home to finalize preparations for the birthday party.

Arrivals started promptly at 2, and continued until about 2:45. At 3 we left for the ice skating rink. The open skating session didn't start until 4, but they strongly recommend showing up early to get admission and skate rentals taken care of, and who am I to argue with the find folks at Montgomery County Parks and Recreation?

The girls were on the ice promptly at 4, except for one. She'd had a nasty accident before that involved some falling and broken bones, she was reticent to skate at all. The short version is: Ed and I rented skates, and took her around the rink once, which ate up about 45 minutes of our time. For the remainder of the hour, we stood on the sidelines and took pictures.

The rest was pretty standard birthday party stuff: pizza, movies, lots of giggling and laughing. The peak of the weekend for me was at 10p on Saturday night. All the girls were in the loft watching The Village, and I was in the kitchen getting a drink. I didn't think they'd heard my bedroom door open, so I oh-so-quietly snuck up the stairs to the loft. I was crouched really low so they wouldn't see me, and just as I got to the top, I jumped up and shouted. It was HILARIOUS! I've never seen a group of girls jump that high! And the screams!! Priceless.

Sunday morning I woke up around 7 to get breakfast started. One of the girls had to leave early on Sunday, but we didn't want her to go without some food. We had waffles, sausage, bacon, potatoes and eggs. After breakfast, we all went upstairs and I played a game of Halo 2 against SD and 2 of her friends. Not really fair, since Halo is pretty involved. Still, 68 kills during King of the Hill is pretty cool (but, in all fairness, I treat EVERY game like a kill-fest, no matter the purpose!)

Then the girls did girly things, and everyone left around 2 on Sunday afternoon. Sunday evening our friends came over, and we gave them their Christmas/Hanukkah/Birthday/New Years/Every Other Event gifts. They seemed happy, so we are too. Had Chinese for dinner. Made macaroons. Played some computer games. Pretty standard stuff. I'm looking forward to a week at work so I can relax! Annie goes to the vet tonight for surgery, and I'll pick her up tomorrow. SD has a winter band concert tomorrow, and then we have our holiday dinner/game night on Wednesday. Busy busy busy!

Annie Update

She's been on Clindamycin since Monday the 5th, and her CBC two days ago show that her white blood cell count has gone from around 25,000 to 31,000, so Dr. Orenstein is adding Clavamox.

Doc is absolutely positive this is because of her mouth problems, and that it won't go away without the procedure, so he's not going to wait until the level drops to normal, which is good news. I hope that the double-whammy antibiotics bring her counts back under control.

Birthday Bash

SD's birthday is this weekend, and we're pretty geeked up about it. She's having a small handful of friends over (6 at the most - we haven't had RSVP's for all yet, so it'll probably trim down a little). We're taking them all ice skating on Saturday, and I know that SD's excited. We'll come home and have pizza, cake & ice cream, she can open her presents, and they'll go upstairs and watch movies and do girly things while Ed and I hole up in the bedroom with an XBox.

We'll make pancakes and waffles on Sunday morning for breakfast, and they can continue to watch TV and chat, unless there's somewhere they want to go (read: the mall). In any event, it will be fun. I'll have a good two hours of reading my book while they're skating, and, as Martha Stewart would say, it's a good thing, just like the exercise yard, or Salisbury steak day.

Gaming

WARNING: GEEK ALERT

So, Ed and I beat Halo on Heroic. We've been tackling the Legendary, and I've gotta say, I'm not as good as I thought I was. Still, it's a good way to fine tune playing abilities.

In our search for games with good cooperative, split-screen (or system link) campaigns, we ran across Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Brute Force.

Castle is alright--in-game graphics are a little weak, so it doesn't have a very natural feel to it. The one thing it DOES have that I've found myself enjoying immensly is the stabbing. Sounds morbid, I know, but I love it. You weild a knife and can squeeze the trigger to stab someone, and if you hold down the trigger, the guy goes stab-stab-stab really fast. It's great for breaking open boxes and stuff, plus the noise is really funny: whoosh, whoosh, whoosh (at about 5 stabs a second).

Brute is good; I like being able to switch characters. Sometimes, you want Hawk for her "cloaking" abilities. Sometimes you want Tex for his awesome Berserker mode (grab two guns and go to town!). It's an older game, so again, the game play is a little cheesy, but the campaign is fun, and at $5 a copy, we can each load up our own XBox to play system-link without getting a loan.

I'm always looking for recommendations on games with great two-player cooperative campaigns. I like first-person shooters and strategy games (just like the games mentioned here). RPG's are alright, as long as they're not too weird - loved Parasite Eve. We have multiple computers, two XBoxes, a PS2, a PS1, a Dreamcast, a SNES, and two Game Boy Advances with the link cable. If you know of a game that works on any of these systems that you think I'd like, please comment.

Vet Saga

First, a little history on Annie and the vet.

Last February, we had a little problem, and accidentally folded Annie up in the sleeper sofa (and by "we", I mean "Ed"). During her struggle for freedom, she ripped one of her back nails completely from the nail bed. When in a couple of days it hadn't healed, we took her to the vet. While we were there we asked him to check her mouth because she'd had some awful breath, and her mouth was sore (she would cringe when you'd pet the side of her face).

Dr. Orenstein managed to get her mouth open, and it turns out that was a much bigger problem than the toe. She had two walnut-sized sores in the back of her mouth--nearly blocking her airway--and a mouthful of rotten teeth. Her CBC (a test for white blood cells) was showing a count of approximately 29,000 when average is 15,000-17,000. She went in for surgery in early March to have the teeth extracted (7 or 8, can't remember), and the abscesses removed. They also performed biopsies on the growths to make sure they weren't cancerous. At the time of that surgery, he said there were a few "suspect" teeth, but he was going to leave them and hope that they would heal. When the biopsies came back, it wasn't cancer, but a form of lymphocytic plasmacytic stomatitis, which is an autoimmune disease that attacks the teeth; there is some speculation that the cat develops an allergy to plaque. The funny side to all of this? He did nothing about the toe; it healed on it's own.

We brought her home, and her mouth healed amazingly fast (kudos to Dr. Orenstein). We noticed a marked improvement in her halitosis, and the most pleasant side effect was the return of her purr. We could hear her for the first time in years!

That was nine months ago, and recently we've been noticing the bad breath and the mouth tenderness. We took her back in last night, and a quick look inside revealed that the inflammation is back, and it's bad enough to cause her to bite the inside of her mouth, so there's a lot of blood too. Doc put her under a mild anesthesia to get a better look, and ten minutes later we were hit with the news that all of her teeth--minus canines--should be removed. Her white blood cell counts are elevated again to 25,000 (I think - it might be higher or lower - I didn't see the CBC sheet, so I'm running off heresy and memory), so they gave her an antibiotic injection, as well as home antibiotics. I have to take her back next week on Monday for another white blood cell check, and she's scheduled for the procedure the following week. She'll be down for about 3 hours while he pulls ten teeth and removes the inflammation. I struggled with the thought of having a cat that didn't have teeth, a condition that seems not very cat-like, but Doc says she'll be such a happy kitty when this is done, and Ed is reassuring the neurotic part of me that she won't even miss her teeth - she doesn't have the cognitive ability to miss them. I hope they're right, and that Annie remains the sweet, cuddly cat she's been, and that she'll no longer be in pain.

In preparation, we're going to start moving our cats from dry food out all day, to canned, prepared food in the morning and a little snack at night.

Snarky

Ed called bullshit on me this morning. I used the word "snarky", and he said that it didn't exist. Now, to maintain my integrity, I've posted the dictionary.com definition here, as well as the Urban Dictionary definition.