So Monday morning toxicfur got in her car and drove away. 'Twas sad, even though I know she'll be back the 10th (well, presumably in the wee hours of the 11th).
We're surviving the single-head-of-zoohold lifestyle. Mostly. Tuesday night Rocky didn't want his dinner. I was cutting up raw veggies for a salad for myself, so I offered him a hunk of turnip, which he ate, followed by his dinner. Not to worry.
Wednesday morning he didn't even want to come sit while I set down his breakfast, so I put it in the usual place and went on to make my own breakfast. He wandered off and moped on the couch (where he spends about 95% of his life). I tried several times to get him to eat, but he wasn't interested. So I left a note for the dog-walker, wondering if she would notice he was lethargic or anything.
Wednesday evening, he ate half a portion with gusto, so I relaxed a bit. I'm told he wasn't begging for treats on his walk.
Thursday morning, he didn't want breakfast again. I've never seen this dog refuse to eat (the other one does it all the time), but he's not the most food-motivated dog I've seen. So maybe his tummy was upset. Or maybe it was something more ominous. The nightmare in the back of the mind is what happened to Teh Dawg, the first symptom of whose (relatively advanced) lymphoma was loss of appetite. For her it was seriously alarming when she wouldn't eat, because she was a strongly food-motivated dog.
So I called the vet when they opened, stayed home from work in the morning, and took him in late in the morning. Some poking, some prodding, one unhappy puppy who'd be happy to promise to eat anything I told him to, just to get out of there, a green rectal exam (grass clippings, aha!) and the diagnosis is an upset tummy, possibly related to the missing alpha-person in his household. They sold me a bag of bland dogfood, which two out of two dogs surveyed think smells absolutely divine.
He's eating again. I'm trying to keep him from grazing on grass clippings left by the mulching mower. And he's obviously feeling better.
/me is alarmist, but it'd be sad if I lost the puppy while toxicfur was enjoying her vacation.
30 years ago this week I got out of the navy. A friend and her husband (iGrrrl's parents, actually) were off to Europe and needed a house sitter, so after the movers took my stuff, I stayed there for a week. Including the worst sunburn of my life, on the 4th of July, on some beach south of Canaveral. I'd been admitted to grad school by the physics department in Madison, so I drove across country to visit my folks, leaving bits of my scalp scattered across the sere, 110 F, landscape of Kansas.
When I arrived (south of Denver), Mom goes, "Hey, here's somebody from out of town; we should do the tourist things we never do because we live here." So the first day (I'd driven up from sea level) we drove up Mt. Evans . When we got there, I could hardly get out of the car. Now iGrrrl's dad was a lifelong smoker who had a bad case of emphysema when I knew him. He carried a cane, not because there was anything wrong with his legs, but because, he said, people will let you sit and rest anytime you want, for as long as you want, if you have a cane. I could have used one.
Anyway, thence to Madison and a life of science. Thirty years. Woh.
By interesting coincidence, the same day I was officially separated from active duty (9 July 1980) is the day toxicfur's younger brother P was born. He now has children of his own. Happy birthday, P!
This afternoon I did my six-weekly blood tests, to monitor the needed dosage of a drug to suppress my thyroid. The phlebotomist couldn't find the usual vein. Ow. :-( I'm expecting to find a big bruise there tomorrow.
Sporadic communications from toxicfur assure me she's having a wonderful time doing as nearly nothing as one could imagine, in North Carolina. She'll spend the long weekend and most of next week with P and his kids, one of whom is now nearly a month old (the other is 2 and a half).
I found a treasure-trove of data from 1997. It's remarkably ill-documented, but some of it seems to be just what the doctor ordered.
I'm wrestling with the book-cover generating wizard software at lulu.com. For my birthday, toxicfur made me a front cover for an old book-length character blog. I finally got that installed where the front cover should go. I thought it'd be cool to put the wordle I'd generated from the text at the top of the back cover, with a paragraph or two of text explaining what's inside. But it wants to match the height of that figure to the whole back cover, making it about 3x wider than the cover, and with huge pixels, since it's designed to be a few inches on a side. >:-(
There's an option of making your own pdf file and uploading it. Perhaps I'll try that, though I'm not that familiar with what tools to use on a mac.
Somehow there's less time available when I'm home alone. Not sure how that works. I blame inefficient time management.
Speaking of which, it's still 4 hours til the extended weekend begins. I should manage some time.
We're surviving the single-head-of-zoohold lifestyle. Mostly. Tuesday night Rocky didn't want his dinner. I was cutting up raw veggies for a salad for myself, so I offered him a hunk of turnip, which he ate, followed by his dinner. Not to worry.
Wednesday morning he didn't even want to come sit while I set down his breakfast, so I put it in the usual place and went on to make my own breakfast. He wandered off and moped on the couch (where he spends about 95% of his life). I tried several times to get him to eat, but he wasn't interested. So I left a note for the dog-walker, wondering if she would notice he was lethargic or anything.
Wednesday evening, he ate half a portion with gusto, so I relaxed a bit. I'm told he wasn't begging for treats on his walk.
Thursday morning, he didn't want breakfast again. I've never seen this dog refuse to eat (the other one does it all the time), but he's not the most food-motivated dog I've seen. So maybe his tummy was upset. Or maybe it was something more ominous. The nightmare in the back of the mind is what happened to Teh Dawg, the first symptom of whose (relatively advanced) lymphoma was loss of appetite. For her it was seriously alarming when she wouldn't eat, because she was a strongly food-motivated dog.
So I called the vet when they opened, stayed home from work in the morning, and took him in late in the morning. Some poking, some prodding, one unhappy puppy who'd be happy to promise to eat anything I told him to, just to get out of there, a green rectal exam (grass clippings, aha!) and the diagnosis is an upset tummy, possibly related to the missing alpha-person in his household. They sold me a bag of bland dogfood, which two out of two dogs surveyed think smells absolutely divine.
He's eating again. I'm trying to keep him from grazing on grass clippings left by the mulching mower. And he's obviously feeling better.
/me is alarmist, but it'd be sad if I lost the puppy while toxicfur was enjoying her vacation.
30 years ago this week I got out of the navy. A friend and her husband (iGrrrl's parents, actually) were off to Europe and needed a house sitter, so after the movers took my stuff, I stayed there for a week. Including the worst sunburn of my life, on the 4th of July, on some beach south of Canaveral. I'd been admitted to grad school by the physics department in Madison, so I drove across country to visit my folks, leaving bits of my scalp scattered across the sere, 110 F, landscape of Kansas.
When I arrived (south of Denver), Mom goes, "Hey, here's somebody from out of town; we should do the tourist things we never do because we live here." So the first day (I'd driven up from sea level) we drove up Mt. Evans . When we got there, I could hardly get out of the car. Now iGrrrl's dad was a lifelong smoker who had a bad case of emphysema when I knew him. He carried a cane, not because there was anything wrong with his legs, but because, he said, people will let you sit and rest anytime you want, for as long as you want, if you have a cane. I could have used one.
Anyway, thence to Madison and a life of science. Thirty years. Woh.
By interesting coincidence, the same day I was officially separated from active duty (9 July 1980) is the day toxicfur's younger brother P was born. He now has children of his own. Happy birthday, P!
This afternoon I did my six-weekly blood tests, to monitor the needed dosage of a drug to suppress my thyroid. The phlebotomist couldn't find the usual vein. Ow. :-( I'm expecting to find a big bruise there tomorrow.
Sporadic communications from toxicfur assure me she's having a wonderful time doing as nearly nothing as one could imagine, in North Carolina. She'll spend the long weekend and most of next week with P and his kids, one of whom is now nearly a month old (the other is 2 and a half).
I found a treasure-trove of data from 1997. It's remarkably ill-documented, but some of it seems to be just what the doctor ordered.
I'm wrestling with the book-cover generating wizard software at lulu.com. For my birthday, toxicfur made me a front cover for an old book-length character blog. I finally got that installed where the front cover should go. I thought it'd be cool to put the wordle I'd generated from the text at the top of the back cover, with a paragraph or two of text explaining what's inside. But it wants to match the height of that figure to the whole back cover, making it about 3x wider than the cover, and with huge pixels, since it's designed to be a few inches on a side. >:-(
There's an option of making your own pdf file and uploading it. Perhaps I'll try that, though I'm not that familiar with what tools to use on a mac.
Somehow there's less time available when I'm home alone. Not sure how that works. I blame inefficient time management.
Speaking of which, it's still 4 hours til the extended weekend begins. I should manage some time.
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