Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Bad Cat Nurse.

This is how my sister described herself in an email to me this morning.

I have to admit, my sister is a great people nurse. Compassionate without sentimentality. Doesn't let doctors bamboozle patients. Tells it like it is. We refer to her, affectionately, of course, as Nurse Rachet. Has been known to crush a few administration and resident "youknowwhats" if appropriate. But she's a dreadful cat nurse.

The good news. Hefner has apparent gastritis. Meaning he ate something. For Hef, that could mean anything that didn't eat him first. The vet's insructions were to keep him away from food for 24 hours to make sure he didn't barf and dehydrate himself, and to monitor his, ahem, leavings. Like the rest of us, she has to work, but leaves at some godawful hour to take report. When she tried to shut him in a bedroom to keep him away from the other cat's food, this is a direct quote:

"He looked at me like your putting me in jail!!!"

And you know what this means. Hefner is now running around the house terrorizing Trixie (aka: Dementia for reasons that will go unexplained). This from a woman who has been known to tell human patients to "suck it up", and "be happy you are alive and recovering" or "don't take your meds and die, it's fine with me". (Now you see the Nurse Rachet reference.)

All I can say is that if I was sick. I'd sure want her on my side.

So for now, all seems well. If more barfing occurs, the vet may have to x-ray him for "foreign objects". Oh glory. What next!

Monday, March 26, 2007

The week from hell...

..is now history. But, naturally, there is cleaning up to do. And frankly, I'm just too tired to do it.

The conference I coordinated went well. I was pleased with the comments (unsolicited) that we received. The anonymous evaluations look good. So all the hard work was worth it I think.

Today, however, the news isn't all dandy. My sister sent me email to tell me she fed her cat some of the poisoned food. Not alot, but enough to worry her. He is going to the vet today for bloodwork. She will be unconsolable if something happens to him. He's not her only cat, nor even her "favorite", but he's a sweetie and has got quite a personality, and I know she'd take his death very hard.

I tried to marshall all my knowledge about kidney disease and poison clearance rates (I did renal research for 6 years, including clearance rates for drug companies.) but I'm not sure I helped much. Now it is just a matter of trying to hope everything is OK.




This is a photo of Hefner in his Kitty Pi Bed. He's even cuter in real life, and you just have to love a cat who appreciates knitting.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

The Good, the Bad, and....well more Good ....

This past weekend we were supposed to be doing some fun stuff, but first we had to get there. Naturally, it snowed (and snowed and snowed) on Friday, and that made the traveling we were supposed to do on Saturday a risky proposition.

So I switched our season Saturday night tickets and we ended up doing this on Sunday afternoon. It was fabulous. Etta Cox has some set of pipes on her!


Unfortunately on the way back to the hotel to change here's the bad.....





Sigh. Rear ended at a stop sign on an on ramp to the Ft. Pitt Bridge. Yunz in the 'Burgh know exactly where I'm talking about.












Then..."it was a hockey night in Pittsburgh"! (With apologies to Mike Lange.)







And wow was that fun! It was my very first hockey game. The boys (two thirds of the team are under 23 and a handful, the best players, are under 21, I'm not kidding when I say boys) won! And we saw an overtime and a shootout.












Not the final score, but dandy anyway.
















And Rich was impressed too! He's just very intense when it comes to sports.







You can't say we're not eclectic!

Monday, March 12, 2007

Felting progress....



Franco's sibling is moving right along. He is loosely stuffed and drying after felting. He should be plenty dry tonight. I'll give him eyes and you'll really see his personality come out.

It only took him about 48 hours to be complete dry, but he'll actually be sitting about 72 hours. And I'll let you in on a little secret. I spin cycle all of my felting, and most of the items I wash for blocking. I don't put it through the rinse and spin, but only through the spin at the end of the wash. Since I use a non-rinsing wool wash, there is no reason to rinse. And I know the caveat is that the felting will crease, so far....knocking on every piece of wood in the vicinity....I've yet to have a crease appear.

I then set the piece on the edge of our (unused) kitchen table, where the heat/AC is vented from the ceiling. Easy peasy.

On the fancy ass contact front, my doc is reordering and refitting my contacts, and I will now try tri-focals. I'm wearing my old lenses and they feel very good. My far vision suffers though.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Heading toward the finish line....

I actually started this post yesterday, and phffft! gone. Who the heck knows what I did. But the finish line in question is for this:



Yes indeedy, Franco's brother is this close to being felted. I do my felting on Saturday or Sunday mornings when hubby is dead to the world. Fewer "what the hell are you doing?" questions that way. But since this was brother's state yesterday, today, he is no longer in pieces. He is all ready to pop into the washer this weekend!! Yea! By this time next week I may have twinsies (how does one spell twinsies?)

But what is making all of this harder is that I've just gotten new fancy ass contacts. They are bifocal lenses, and I have great distance vision, pretty good near vision, but NO middle (arms length) vision. Thus, all of a sudden, I can't see the computer screen. And since most of my work is tech based. This is a real problem. I have a very nice optometrist, and I fear this will be quite a disappointment to him. We get three shots to get this right, then I can return them, hopefully for a refund.

So I've been struggling in a week when I really shouldn't be.

Meanwhile, I've started the Rock and Weave socks from STR. They're really going to be cute and I think pretty easy to knit. The linen stitch is simply a two row, two stitch, pattern, but I was so tired last evening, I couldn't remember the pattern sequence. So I gave up.

It really does have the makings of a great "on-the-go" project. Which is good because we'll be really "on-the-go" next weekend. Another reason to get Franco's brother felted.