My Kind Of Town
Stuck in Customs has some amazing HD photos.
I really like this one…Ready to Strike
Click here to see it full size.
In college I raised an iguana from a tiny baby who liked to lay in bed and eat strawberries to a full size monster who wanted to eat me. Tristan Morrison Lovecraft III. This photo reminds me of him.
Stuck in Customs website
We got the call from the vet today. Shaylah and Kele De were fine but Lilo had some elevated levels of something in her results which led them to believe there might be a problem and they needed to test her again. Immediately. This of course sets me into sobbing panic mode. I think the words “poison”, “I.V.” and “kidney failure” are good causes for a freak out. We brought her in at 5:30pm and by 6pm we learned she was fine! They think that maybe something in her system was out of whack that day of the original test-they mentioned car sickness. Which makes sense after the traumatic trip they had to the vet. Whatever the reason I am glad it went away. So the girls are all fine. Yippee!
Last night I was lucky enough to see Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin. I have never seen the play before and it was pretty amazing. It’s mean and cruel but funny and you catch yourself laughing, gasping and saying “Daaammmnnn” alot.
I also seemed to be in the “row of people who’s guests didn’t show up” which is fun because you have lots of room to relax and spread out. And you can say things like “daaammmnn” and “ooh that was awful” under your breath and no one can hear you. But it also makes it pretty obvious if you start bawling at the end so I held it together until I got in the car where John was waiting.
Yesterday was vet day. We waited until the last minute to bring the cat carrier in from the garage-hoping this would delay any last minute kitty panic. Didn’t work. Even though she was happily lounging on the bed in the second floor, Kele De sensed what was going on and vanished the minute that thing came in. We locked Shaylah in the pantry while John dragged Kele De out from under the bed. As soon as she saw the crate she started yowling and we shoved her in. Then the real terror started. We tried to add Shaylah and they both kept pushing and shoving their way out while we just tried to get them both in. It was like a crazy zombie kitty movie-they’re howling and forcing their way out and we are just trying to get the gate closed.
Finally the whole tribe is in the car and on the way to the vet which is about 20 minutes away. The whole way Shaylah is making this awful crying noise and after a few minutes Lilo gets upset that the kitties are so sad so she starts whining and crying. This makes me start to cry.
At the vet we learn more about the recall and he gets blood and urine samples from Shaylah and Lilo. But Kele De’s bladder is empty so we have to leave her there for a few hours which we all find very upsetting. I asked if Shaylah could stay with her but they said no. Shaylah and Kele De are not from the same litter but they met in the shelter at about 12 weeks old and have now been together for nearly 8 years and only seperated once. This was not going to be good. So I drop John off at work and take Shaylah and Lilo home. Again with the crying but now it’s a “where the hell is Kele De?” cry. We get in the house and both of them are visibly upset-crying and looking for Kele De. It was awful. Kele De finally came home around 5:30 and all was well again.
Oh yeah. How much did it cost? $588!!!! Thanks Menu Foods! We hopefully will have the results Friday morning.
So our vet suggests that we bring the girls in for a blood test due to the mother f&%$#^& pet food recall. So tomorrow morning it’s a family trip to the vet. Always fun. Lilo’s fine with it but Kele De and Shaylah hate leaving the house. They usually end up peeing on themselves in the crate, crying hysterically and shed a good chunk of their hair. LOVELY.
Odds are they are all fine but since they ate the packets that were recalled I can’t relax. Everytime they take a drink I am like, “are your kidney’s ok?” Why take chances? Take the hell trip, pay the ridiculous amount of money and finally be able to breathe.
Poor Lilo. Last night she woke me up by twitching and crying in her sleep. I thought I woke her up but then she let out the saddest, longest cry-it was almost human and totally heart breaking. I woke her up and held her and told her it would be ok. She moaned and gave me a kiss. Poor doggie. I wish she could tell me what it was about because she seemed so sad. She’s had bad dreams before but this one seemed to be the worst. Some articles claim that you shouldn’t wake them but I don’t agree with that. If I am having a horrible nightmare I would want to be woken up.
John and I took Nathaniel and Ethan to the Bulls game tonight. The first three quarters were pretty dull. They were calling fouls left and right so there wasn’t much action. But to me the games are about the little side shows and Benny the Bull. At first I was sad that the Matadors were not performing. If you click on the link you can watch two of their performances. But then the Swingin Seniors came out. Very entertaining. And Benny came up to our seats to give us a special hello! I couldn’t get a good photo though. Sigh.
The real fun started in the last 10 minutes. If the Bulls score at least 100 points the crowd gets a free Big Mac. The fouls kept the score really low through most of the game but then at the end they were only 10 points away-the crowd went crazy! People started chanting “Big Mac! Big Mac!”. It was an slow crawl to a hundred but they made it with like 14 seconds to spare. People were cheering and high-fiving strangers all over a $2.79 sandwhich! I don’t even really like Big Mac’s that much but it felt like such a major goal was reached! And we won the game.
Remember the 1984 Summer Olympics and the McDonald’s promotion? I was 12 years old and spending all of my time with the Vreeland kids. We would go to McDonalds at least twice a day to get a free game card-no purchase was necessary. (They did get pretty sick of us and started limiting it to one card a day.) Each card represented an olympic event and if the US medaled you won a free menu item. Bronze was a free soda, silver a free fry and gold was the Big Mac. I know we were eating Big Mac’s non-stop that summer because American rocked the Olympics with a total of 174 medals after Cuba, the Soviet Union and East Germany boycotted the games. McDonald’s lost millions of dollars and we learned some disgusting eating habits. John said they did the same thing in Chicago but they had more McDonald restaurants to hit up than we did in Superior!
The above incident involving McDonalds was parodied in the Simpsons episode, Lisa’s First Word. In this episode Krusty runs a promotion where Krusty Burger is the “Official Meat-Flavored Sandwich of the 1984 Olympics”. In the promotion, scratch off tickets are given out and if the US wins the event indicated on the ticket then the holder of the ticket wins a free burger. The promotion however was rigged so only events where communists usually win are given out. After the Soviet Union boycotts the games Krusty loses 44 million dollars.
Lilo and I are trying to mix up our walking routines so today we went down to North Pond. We got there early but it was already heating up which was great for the turtles. Nearly every log had at least one turtle on it!
lots of birds!
It’s a great place to walk-plenty of free parking, wildlife and the trail has some small hills and intersting terrain. If you don’t have time to get out of the city you can at least pretend a little at North Pond.