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      Thursday, September 01, 2011


catstuff
02:55 PM - 09/01/2011

The topic: Slow going with Skipper
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It’s obvious he’s feeling way better, but his weight isn’t going up. I’ve been weighing him on a daily basis and I’m not happy with it.

So, this morning I opened up one of the gelcaps I’d put the l-Lysine in and popped in a quarter of a periactin. He had a little bit of “my tummy doesn’t feel good”, slept, ate, slept, ate, slept, ate, crashed on the bed for hours, then went outside and is now under a lounge chair by the pool, sleeping. 

The past couple of days he’s gotten his skinny ass back into the rafters, which I don’t like, and he’s slept up there, but today it was the bed, which I do like.

So, I think my protocal for the next week or so will be the appetite stimulant in the morning.  He did do well when I had him on that last month, I just didn’t want it to be long term, but I’d rather he be a little off after taking the pill in the morning and eating, than go anorexic.

Poor guy.

      Sunday, September 04, 2011


catstuff
08:33 AM - 09/04/2011

The topic: Skip’s weight
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Last Sunday, he weighed eleven pounds, seven and a half ounces.  This morning, he was an even twelve pounds! When I first took him in to the vet last month, he weighed over thirteen pounds and he’s lost weight before I took him in.  He continued to lose when I brought him home.

He’s doing better!  Still on the appetite stimulant, but he is getting stronger.  He’s got more fight in him when I take him into the shop to weigh him, but he’s pretty good about staying still on the scales.

So, he’s put on over a half of a pound in a week.  I’m hoping he keeps this up until he gets back to his fighting weight.  Even though he’s never been a fighter.


otherstuff
08:37 AM - 09/04/2011

The topic: Disney photos from last year
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I really have to get organized when I work on these. What a mess.

Most of the photos are 4:3 ratio.  I’ve resized the pictures to a height of 1080, then put them on a background of 1920 x 1080.  If the pictures were smaller than that to begin with, I kept them the same size and adjusted the background accordingly.  I want the resolution as good as possible for the yearly DVD.

My problem?  Somehow I’ve got duplicates and triplicates of the copies. And for some reason, they’re not all the same file size. And since there’s no EXIF information on the copies, I have no idea what time of the day they happened.  Well, I can keep hopping back and forth between the originals and the copies.  Oh, and the EXIF information isn’t right on all of them. 

Everyone (except one person) sent copies of the photos that were taken.  For some reason, some of them are showing they were taken in January.  I’m at a loss.

I’ve got multiple folders for day.  I’m so confused!

So, next time?

When I download the pictures to my computer, I’ll immediately put them into the correct folder (day/time).  Those will be labeled “originals”.  Then I’ll split up the “originals” further. And those are the ones I’ll work with.  So, next year, I’m not stuck in this quagmire I’ve put myself into this year. 

I’ve got floors that need scrubbing, windows need washing. I’ve got better things to do than fix my problems.

      Thursday, September 08, 2011


otherstuff
08:41 AM - 09/08/2011

The topic: Stupid people
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Argh! Hubby just got a phone call, we billed a contractor $4K for the balance of a job, contractor says he sent the customer a bill for $87K - current balance on job (high end Coronado homes), customer gives him $20K, said no more. “That’s what you quoted last year.”

Don’t know what the contract says, but for most of the sub-contractors (which DH is), when they get quotes from their suppliers, they’re only good for 30 days. Not 180 days. So, subs have to pay more for the material and that cost passes on to the contractor who passes it on to the customer.

DH thinks that when the client paid the deposit invoice, which spelled out what was quoted last December and the increase in cost in July, that there would be an additional $4k due at the end of that portion of the job, means that the client agreed to the terms. If they didn’t like the terms, they shouldn’t have paid the deposit.  If they didn’t pay the deposit, he’d not have done the job. And not been out any money.

It will be interesting to see how work progresses as the other subs aren’t getting paid either (and one of the suppliers is Dixieline Lumber). Brian’s got stuff to do out there and he’s not going to do it. He said why should he if he’s not going to get paid? We’re sure we’ll be paid eventually from the contractor, even if it comes out of his pocket, he’s a stand up guy.

 

      Friday, September 09, 2011


otherstuff
07:44 AM - 09/09/2011

The topic: The power went out
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Yesterday afternoon at 3:38.  I was in the kitchen dicing, slicing and cutting up a bunch of fresh bell pepper’s I’d picked from my plants for freezing. 

Of course, the first thing my mind goes to is “did I pay the bill?”...think about it, yeah, I did, actually paid it before it was even a day late, yay me. So, that’s not it. Brian was home and he came and sat by me while I worked.  After a half hour, the power still wasn’t on.  I started a search for an AM radio.  I found an emergency crank/solar/battery operated radio that I’d bought years ago from Woot.com.  Found a station and set it there.  The outage was county wide.  

One of the reports from an SDG&E spokesperson said that a line was “severed”.  Poor choice of words so close to 9/11. The root cause was announced last night.

“The outage was started after an Arizona Public Service utility employee performed a procedure on the North Gila-Hassayampa transmission line near Yuma, Ariz., that resulted in a major outage to Southern California.”

Over five million people were affected.

We had barbequed hot dogs for dinner.  I found my package of battery tea lights I’d gotten at CostCo last year and started placing them around the house and in the bathrooms.  Around 8:30 I got most of the cats in with the help of a flashlight. Brian was snoozing on the sofa.  I looked around and called to him “you should really come see this, you’ll most likely never have this opportunity again. There are no lights, just the moon and stars.” 

He came out and looked around and went over to the swing.  I joined him and we talked about how clear the sky was, how bright the moon.  And then, someplace in the neighborhood, someone started shooting off fireworks.  Not the loud bangers that adolescent males seem to love so much, the ones that annoy the hell out of dogs and us senior folk, but the colorful big ones.  We had a front row seat.  We could hear cheers in the distance as they exploded blooms of color in the sky.  It was really nice. That lasted about a half hour, then we walked down by the pool, sat on the steps with our feet in the water and laid back on the cement, looking at the night sky.  Saw one satellite go by, Brian remembered it from when we used to go out, he said it goes by about 9:00 every night, same area of the sky. 

We hung out there for a while more, then got the remaining cats inside and fell asleep in front of the television.  Which we weren’t watching because, ahem, there was no power.  The radio was on and we dozed listening to the callers reporting in.  “Yes, we’ve got power!”  I turned it off around 10:30 and fell asleep.  At 1:55AM, the power came back on.  First thing I did was turn the catcam computer back on, then turned down the fans, turned off the television (it was on when the power stopped), turned off all of the battery candles and went to bed. Brian was already there.  *lol*

All in all, it was a nice evening. Very relaxing.

      Sunday, September 18, 2011


otherstuff
10:30 AM - 09/18/2011

The topic: I’m alive and kicking!
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I’ve just been incredibly busy getting this DVD together. Got both disks burned Friday, unfortunately on the dual layer, five out of fourteen were coasters (I’m going to have to figure out which burners tanked) and of the single layer, all fifteen worked. Great.  Yesterday, I got the artwork on the disks done and they’re all printed out.  The ink hit the outside of the label area (they’re print on disks) and I had to wipe it off, but it smeared a little. Not happy about that, but it’s a learning process. I hope I don’t have to relearn it next year.  *lol*

I’ve got the covers designed, going to print them out, then do the inserts.  Shouldn’t take all day.

Then it’s on to the shirts, I’ve got what I’m going to do in my head, I just have to put it all together.  It should be good.

And next week I’m going to make more pinwheels.  I first got them at Oriental Trading Company, then they quit carrying the metallic pinwheel headbands.  I see that they’ve once again got metallic pinwheels, but they’re small and not at all what I first got years ago, so I’m going to be making them again this year.

Anyway….

That’s what I’ve been doing.

      Friday, September 23, 2011


catstuff
10:40 AM - 09/23/2011

The topic: What a morning
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It started off cloudy, a little foggy, then it got real bad foggy.  Then the fog started to clear up and we’re sitting here, wondering what on earth that noise was. Figure they’re doing blasting somewhere.

Then DaNiece comes into the room, hides under a chair and growls. Okay, now what? I hold her, she’s really frightened. We look at the other cats, figure it’s Charlie. Nope, Charlie is eating on top of the bookshelf.  Huh.

Look outside, Miss Elizabeth is on her cat tree, she looks down at her paw, shakes it and starts shaking her head.  Weird.

Then I went to the garage, look out the door (I keep it open during the day).  Here an odd noise. Look outside. 

It’s RAINING!  *lol* 

It wasn’t blasting, it was thunder!  It scared the crap out of DaNiece. I don’t recall it bothering her in the past, but maybe she was doing something that it startled her.

I found her hiding under my desk earlier, just started talking to her, she got up and she’s back outside right now.

Poor thing.


otherstuff
01:15 PM - 09/23/2011

The topic: Facebook changes
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Well, I most likely won’t be spending much time on FB.  Maybe once a day to feed my pet in Pet Society. 

I really don’t like the new format and I’ll hate it if my internet browsing shows up on my feed.  What stories I read in what ezine or whatever.

Instead of protecting user privacy, looks like they’re going in the opposite direction.

Sucks.

      Tuesday, September 27, 2011


catstuff
06:30 AM - 09/27/2011

The topic: Send safe passage thoughts to Mickey today
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We’re going to say goodbye.  Last week, he was eating chicken and kibble and Friskies and Fancy Feast, he was following me around the yard, snuggling up to me in bed…. This week, he’ll eat baby food if I put it under his nose in a spoon.  He can barely walk, he’s getting so weak.

I think his kidneys have finally given out. 

I know in my heart and mind that he’s not going to get better, so we’re going to say goodbye.

I hate this part.


catstuff
05:33 PM - 09/27/2011

The topic: Well, Mickey is still here
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He came into the office this afternoon, looking for food.

He lapped up some watered down A/D and had turkey baby food earlier.  He looks alert, he’s not out of it like Ollie or Bart were. 

I gave him some goat’s milk this afternoon and he seemed to like that.  I know he doesn’t have much longer, but he’s got longer than today.

I hate kidney disease.

      Wednesday, September 28, 2011


catstuff
10:39 AM - 09/28/2011

The topic: Rollercoaster is over
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Mickey is gone. 

I noticed yesterday that the right side of his face was swollen, thinking bad tooth.  Well, in his weakened condition, there’s nothing that could be done, from our experience with Miss Elizabeth, we knew that kidney cats are not good candidates for anesthesia, it’s really, really hard on their systems.  Mickey now was way worse than she was then.

So, with heavy heart I told Brian, he agreed, said call and make an appointment.  I called and was told we could bring him in at any time. So, I got some jeans on and we went down.

We sat in the waiting room for a long time, it was quiet and I held Mickey in my arms and Brian petted him. When the dogs started arriving, I held him a little longer, but when that rambunctious intact dog came in, I put Mickey back in the carrier. 

Finally a room freed up, we went in, the waited for the vet.  We said our goodbyes to Mick and told him how much better things will be, how he’ll see Maggie and Rusty and Bobby and Ollie and Boney, how he’ll see them all again and then someday he’ll see us, too.

When the vet came in I told him about my concerns with Mickey’s mouth and how when that side of the face was rubbed, Mickey would gag.  The vet felt that it was probably unrelated to the kidney disease.  Anyway, Mickey was sedated, was laying on his side for the first time in weeks.  Finally, he’s resting. Then the vet shaved a spot on his front leg and gave him the final shot.  Mickey went quickly. He was ready.

Before we left, the vet said “do you mind if I take a look in his mouth?”  Sure, go ahead.

Mickey had a tumor growing in his jaw.  Most likely squamous cell cancer, the same thing that we lost Pepper to. 

Goodbye Mickey.  You were one of the cats who never gave us any cause for concern. You were well mannered and sweet.  We’ll miss you. We’ll miss you a lot.

      Thursday, September 29, 2011


catstuff
07:47 AM - 09/29/2011

The topic: The next morning….
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Well, I thought I’d get a nice night’s sleep, having not to worry about bothering Mickey. 

Yeah. Right.

Through the night, when I’d wake up, I had at least three different cats on my pillow (Mystie, Potter and Marco). Bobby jumped out of the bedroom window full on to my belly. Ooomph!  When we went to bed, there were eight cats on it. 

I guess it’s that time when the status quo shakes up, seeing as Mickey was the senior cat. 

I miss him a little. I’m not sad that he’s gone.  Because I know how very, very ill he was and I know (especially after being told he had a tumor in his jaw) that there was no hope of recovery. Ever. Even if we were bazillionaires (right now, we’re hundredaires) no amount of money would have fixed Mickey. I am sad that his kidneys were failing.  I am sad that he had cancer. I think if it hadn’t been for the cancer, he’d still be with us, but when he couldn’t eat…

Anyway, this is going to be an interesting couple of weeks.

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lisaviolet is seventy something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities.

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