Friday, February 24, 2012

SuperNova Is Not Able To Leap Tall Buildings In A Single Bound

Nova was still limping -- the shot really didn't seem to do much for him -- so I took him back into the vet today. Where they did another exam, took some x-rays, and decided that he probably really does just have a pulled muscle. And maybe he keeps kind of re-injuring it, since it hasn't stopped him jumping up on things. There was discussion of maybe confining him to a small space with nothing to jump on, but it was eventually decided that I could just take away the giant cat tree, because that's the only really high place he gets onto. Well, that and my computer desk, but he only does that when I'm home, so theoretically I can discourage it. Of course, even as I type this, he launched himself up here again, so maybe that's a little problematic. But hopefully it's not quite as bad as climbing all the way up near the ceiling.

And they still don't have all Newt's test results. Apparently they had to be sent to two different labs, one after the other, so it's taking a while.

Sigh. Cats.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Zippity Doo Dah!

I just got a couple of discs in the mail from my aunt with a whole bunch of photos from our Hawaii trip, including the ones taken of me riding the zipline. Of course, I couldn't not share them! So...

Here I am all excited and ready to go! Or possibly all finished and happy to have had the experience. One or the other:



Mid-flight:



And coming in for a landing:



Man, that was fun.

She sent me a lot of other pictures she took, too, some of which are just gorgeous. I'll probably share some more later. I wouldn't want to overwhelm you with all the awesomeness at once.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Sunshine On My Shoulders

Man, I started today off in an irritable mood. But it is utterly impossible to sustain any level of grumpiness in weather like this. Just stepping outside is like an instant hit of happiness.

More like this, please!

Monday, February 20, 2012

Here, Have Some Random Links

Novis Nerdfest - Sci-Fi Medley: An a capella medley of science fictional themes. Most of which are instrumental, so that's kind of impressive, I guess. See if you can name 'em all!

First Ever Star Trek®/Doctor Who Comic Book Crossover Coming in May : Clearly this is some kind of marketing ploy aimed at getting me to buy comics again, now that Farscape's run is over. And it'll probably work. But here I'd would have thought Trek might not want to call attention to Borg's suspicious resemblance to the Cybermen.

Portal: No Escape (Live Action Short Film by Dan Trachtenberg): An interesting little live action film based on Portal. Probably won't mean anything to you if you haven't played the game, though.

Tree Lobsters: #348 SHOPA: An interesting analogy for a certain recent proposed internet "copyright protection" act.

The Wonderful and Terrible Habit of Buying Too Many Books: I was all prepared to embrace the writer of this article as a kindred spirit, but then he referred to "the 371 books sitting on my shelves." And I laughed. Come back and talk to me when you've added another zero onto that one, kid.

Every Doctor Who Story 1963 to Now - A Babelcolour Tribute: I think I've probably linked to an earlier version of this in the past, but this one is very much up to date. Have I mentioned lately how much I love Doctor Who?

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Currently, It's Still February

This is way, way later in the month than I usually do this. Which perhaps tells you something about what kind of month it's been.

Current clothes: Light tan jeans. White t-shirt with some weirdly psychedelic-colored cacti on it. (I have no idea what that's about. Somebody gave me this shirt years ago.) Long-sleeve blue denim button-down open over that. White socks. Black sneakers. Black belt.

Current mood: I've been randomly stressy about various things lately. I was doing rather better today, but circumstances have conspired to irritate me since the moment I woke up this morning -- at 7:30 when the mailman ran my doorbell -- and I believe they have finally succeeded.

Current music: More random stuff, as usual. The last actual album I listened to was Wander This World by Johnny Lang.

Current annoyance: As you probably don't remember, unless you're way more obsessed with this blog than you ought to be, I was complaining bitterly a year or two ago that I had to keep buying new coffeemakers because the carafes would break, and I could never find replacements that fit, no doubt because the manufacturers cannily discontinue them almost as fast as they come out, just to keep you buying new machines. Back then, I mentioned that I had bought one that was a bit more expensive but had a metal carafe and should actually last me a good long while. Well, the carafe is fine, but the damned machine stopped working properly. It hisses and smokes and gurgles and takes forty minutes to produce a half-pot of sludge. This despite the fact that I have been conscientious about cleaning it regularly. At this point, I gave up, went out, and bought a machine with a glass carafe, figuring if I were going to have to replace it that often regardless, I might as well go for the cheaper option. Yeah, well, that glass carafe lasted two fucking days and broke before I had this morning's coffee. Aaaaargh. It is almost enough to make you want to give up the caffeine habit. Almost.

Current thing: I've been trying to be a little more social lately, again. But I'm not very good at it.

Current desktop picture: I finally replaced the palm trees with this picture of an eclipsed moon over the Rocky Mountains. But, pretty as it is, I think I really need to replace it, because just looking at it makes me feel chilly. Way, way too wintry for my current mood. Especially after those Hawaii pictures that preceded it.

Current book: The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet. Which, unfortunately, is going very slowly. I'm also dipping in and out of The Skeptic's Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll, often while playing Laser Chase with the kitten.

Current song in head: "And So It Goes" by Billy Joel, which came up on random shuffle on my iPod on Valentine's Day. Which seems appropriate, as it's one of the few love songs that I find genuinely touching, rather than sappy or misguided or shallow or dumb.

Current DVD in player: Disc 2 of Profit, a very short-lived show from the 90s, starring Adrian Pasdar (later of Heroes fame) as a sociopathic corporate climber. It's pretty good. I do love watching a master manipulator at work, and this guy could give Elim Garak a run for his money. Also, for my on-the-treadmill watching, I have disc 2 of Futurama volume 6.

Current refreshment: Lemon zinger tea.

Current worry: Oh, there are many. But the most immediate one is Nova, whose limp seemed to actually get worse after I took him to the vet yesterday. He may be a bit better today, though. Here's hoping.

Current thought: And, just because today wasn't annoying enough, now my internet keeps crapping out on me. Meaning it's taking me forever to find the links I want, and this may or may not actually post. Hooray.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

And Here I Was Just Calling Him "My Non-Problem Cat."

Apparently my cats have now started up some kind of competition to determine which of them is going to cost me the most time, money, and worry. Nova was far and away in last place in this contest, but he seems to be making at least a vague attempt to catch up. The last few days I've noticed that he seemed to be limping very slightly, so I called the vet yesterday and made him an appointment for this afternoon. Naturally, this morning he seemed considerably better, but I took him in anyway, and the vet says he does seem to be favoring his right front foot a little and his right elbow feels a little hot. (Me, I didn't even realize cats had elbows. I guess you learn something new every day.) It's probably just a pulled muscle or something, but the vet gave him an anti-inflammatory shot and told me to just watch out for signs of an abscess. Aaaand, there went another $80. Stupid cats.

Meanwhile, we're still waiting on most of Newt's test results...

Saturday, February 04, 2012

The Cat Came Back

So, Newt is now back home again, although she's mostly staying in her carrier tonight while we wait for the anesthesia to finish wearing off. Which she really isn't happy about. She's pawing at the carrier door like crazy, in a groggy, stumbling kind of way. Awww. Poor kitty. Unlike every other pet I've had to deal with post-surgery, though, she gets to have a little bit of food and water tonight, because she's so very, very tiny. She also gets more antibiotic eye ointment, which is always fun.

The vet did find a "bump" inside her ear that may or may not have been causing the infection. They're sending samples of pretty much everything they could swab or scrape off of the cat out to a lab for analysis, to try to figure out exactly what the problem is. So even if we don't get improvement out of this, we'll at least get information. Personally, I'm hoping for both. It's going to be a while before the results are back, though.

Friday, February 03, 2012

Yet Again Another Cat Update

Just got back from yet another visit to the vets' office. The news on Happiness is excellent. She's actually gained weight just in the two weeks that she's been on the medication, and the hormone levels in her blood are now slightly below the normal range. Which means we can cut her down to half a pill once a day, instead of half a pill twice a day, and may even be able to go down to every other day later on. The vet was extremely pleased that we'd caught the problem so soon, while it is (apparently) very easy to treat. Yay!

Poor little Newt is doing less well, though. I took her back in because her eyes have gotten all runny again, and there was still gunk in her ear, which seemed to be getting worse. Sure enough, her ear infection is back with a vengeance. The stuff they were pulling out of there with the q-tip this time looked worse than ever. They're thinking that maybe the problem is that there's actually a foreign body stuck in there somewhere that's causing this, or maybe a polyp, since ear infections are very unusual in cats, and since it came back even after the industrial strength antibiotics. They can't tell, though, because there's just way too much gunk in there to see. So they're keeping her overnight and tomorrow they're going to sedate her, syringe her ear out thoroughly, and see if there's anything in there that needs to be removed. I'm really hoping that's the source of the problem. I'm especially hoping that it's just the ear infection that's also causing her eyes to run, which the vet seems to think is reasonably likely, and that it's not feline herpes. Because feline herpes, like every other kind of herpes, is forever and will keep coming back. Fingers crossed!

Maybe I Should Have Watched The End Of Inception After All.

I think I may have had a tiny bit of a lucid dream last night, except the more I think about it, the more I think maybe I was only dreaming that it was a lucid dream. This is very, very confusing.