March 2005 Archives

Oh. My. God. After hearing Tom DeLay spouting a bunch of idiocy on CNN just now (regarding Terri Shiavo's death), I am soooo making a living will (apparently you also have to take care of the power of attorney issue too). Someone joked about tattooing your final wishes on yourself, which seems almost like a good idea after this circus. The whole thing is so sad, and after the way Congress acted, it's scary too.

Anyways...so I'm done with class. Basically a full day early. But it looks like I may be stuck in Indianapolis until tomorrow evening, which sucks. I can probably try to get standby on an earlier flight, but I'm not sure if that's going to be worth the hassle. So maybe I'll go to the zoo tomorrow, if the weather is good.

I still haven't gotten to White Castle. Probably tonight.

I think right now I'm gonna go shop for shoes. :)

Well, class wasn't too bad today, it was basically me and one other person in this class, so things moved along pretty quickly. They took us out for Greek food today, and I had a really yummy beef gyro.

As for yesterday, I did end up going to the mall, and I found a cute sweater at the Gap for $7! I'm normally the worst bargain shopper ever, so I was pretty pleased with myself.

For dinner I got take-out from Texas Roadhouse, because I called in beforehand and found out they give rolls with their take-out. They gave me four, which was awesome.

Then I watched part of Trekkies on my laptop, which is that documentary about Star Trek fans. Holy hell are these people scary. And I'm a Star Trek fan. But wow. It's pretty funny so far.

This morning I got up early and went down to the hotel lobby for their complimentary breakfast. They actually had a pretty nice spread, which included do-it-yourself waffles, which I didn't get to make, since I didn't have enough time. But I think I'll go down earlier tomorrow and try it out.

After class tonight I went to go see Be Cool at a nearby theater. It was actually pretty good, which I wasn't expecting it to be. It was also not horribly wierd to go see a movie by myself, although I don't think I'll be doing it very often. My dinner consisted of popcorn. I was going to stop by White Castle afterwards (there's one across the street from my hotel), but decided it was too late to eat a full meal. I think I'll go there tomorrow though, because I really need to see what White Castle's all about, haha.

Alright, time for me to go to bed, tomorrow I'm staying in after class. White Castle burgers and a new episode of Lost, what could be better!

Hail from Indianapolis!

I'm settled into my hotel room now, with my laptop all hooked up to the wireless internet they have here, so I'm feeling quite relieved to have internet access. It makes being away from home a bit easier (I don't travel well!)

I think Indianapolis will probably join Houston on my list of places that I wouldn't want to live in. It's fairly drab out here, kind of like random buildings popping out of dirt. The upside is that there's an Arby's right by my hotel, and also a Texas Roadhouse, which will be killer if they give you rolls with takeout. I also spotted a Petsmart, so maybe I'll bring gifts for the pets home. :)

I miss being home already! At least I can still blog, haha.

Okay, I think I'm gonna go hit the nearby mall, see if stuff is cheaper here. The weather is at least nice today.

This morning I woke up with a horrible sore throat. I'm definitely getting sick. This sucks.

Next week I'm going to be gone - I'll be in Indianapolis for training for work. But they have high-speed internet at the hotel, and I'll be bringing my laptop, so I should be blogging still. I might even try to finish the damn site redesign while I'm there, something which I never seem to have much time for when I'm home.

I'm typically not a good traveller. I don't mind hotels, I actually kind of like them, I just hate the journey there. I don't like being so unable to reach the comforts of home either. I'll probably bring lots of movies and games with me. I already scoped out where the mall in Indianapolis is, so I plan on hanging out there a bit.

We lost one of our coral colonies last night. I think the cause of death was what's called Rapid Tissue Necrosis. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? Basically all the flesh on the coral just sloughs away, in a matter of hours, which is what happened with ours. I'd had it happen with a small coral piece earlier, but I'm pissed that it happened this time to our big colony.

My tummy hurts now.

My throat has been feeling ick these past two days. I hope I'm not getting sick. I took a Cold-Eez this morning, so maybe that'll help.

Last night I noticed some faint white stuff on Nemo 3 (our big orange one, aka Coral). Sigh. As a precaution, I decided to catch her to do a freshwater dip (sometimes dislodges parasites). It's much easier to catch a clownfish than a blue tang.

I dipped her for about two minutes, and then returned her to the tank. At that point I noticed that our little black clownfish, Nemo 4, had decided to seize the opportunity and dove into the anemone! Coral/Nemo 3 had never let him get close to it before. The rest of the evening Nemo 4 spent snuggling in the anemone while Coral wasn't looking.

Coral didn't look too much better after the dip, and I was afraid I'd find her floating this morning, but she was in the anemone, chasing Nemo 4 from it, and seemingly okay for now. I'm getting the QT set up in case, though. I at least have a good chance of catching the clownfish, unlike the others.

Oh, I got my digital Rebel! I ended up buying the new Rebel XT, which is 8.0 megapixels, and smaller than the previous Rebel, which is nice, because my hands are smallish, and the old Rebel was a bit bulky for me.

I haven't tried it out too much yet, but so far I love it. It's FAST. Marc and I were snapping pictures with the flash one after the other, with no downtime. I took a close-up of Bandit's nose, and you could count all the little scales on his nose.

It'll be nice when the weather gets better and I can start taking some pictures outside. I'll also have to start getting pictures of the tank and fish.

I feel weird blogging about this, but I guess it wouldn't be right not to, either. I dunno.

I haven't blogged in over a week because Marc's mom passed away two Fridays ago. It was somewhat unexpected, but we were at least able to spend Thursday night and all day Friday with her. Marc's grandmother flew down Friday as well to be with her. She stayed with us while she was here, and left just yesterday.

So I wasn't at work all last week, as we spent time preparing things for the service, which was on Wednesday. My company had a site holiday this past Friday, so I stayed home on Thursday, partly because it seemed silly to go to work for one day, partly to stay with Marc, and partly because I was just exhausted.

Friday I had lunch with Melanie (who is leaving Petsmart for a new job) and had dinner with Deepali, Marian, Vicki, and Cynthia and her boyfriend for Cynthia's birthday. It was good to get out of the house for a bit.

It took Bandit almost the entire week to warm up to Marc's grandmother. We finally got it to where he would go to her for pets, and where he was comfortable with her walking around.

Anyways, that's all I have to write for today.

Last night, we had some people who kept calling trying to get us to take some survey about how we get our news. Marc picked up the phone the first time, and told them he wasn't interested. Then they called back like 3 more times during the evening. We have caller ID, so we just didn't bother to pick up the phone.

They called a fifth time (like 10 minutes after they called the fourth time). Marc picked up the phone this time. Before the lady had even said two words, he said, "Yeah. You've called like four times already, and we've been ignoring you. Stop calling us."

Marc, always the blunt and honest one, haha.

I had a run-in with a telemarketer a few years ago. This guy kept calling my parents' house to hawk some student loans for my brothers. This guy had a pretty distinct voice, so I recognized him each time. The first two times he called, I'd barely gotten out the sentence "My parents aren't home right now, can I take a message?" before he'd just hung up on me. Totally rude.

Now, I'm not a nasty person by nature, but I was really put off by this guy. I mean, I'm being really polite by not hanging up on him immediately, and he actually has the gall to hang up on me. So he called again, and this time my response was, "Look, you've called a couple times before, and I know it's you because I recognize your voice, and you've been fucking rude each time." And then I hung up on him.

I only wish I had the guts to do this face-to-face with jerks like that. But it was still pretty gratifying.

Most of the time I don't begrudge the person on the other end of the line, because I know they're just doing their job. It's nice to have caller ID to be able to avoid it though.

Bandit and I finally got to go to agility class last night, after missing the last couple of weeks. He did awesome. We did some really nice jump sequences, and it still amazes me every time how good he is at reading my body language. His weave poles are looking really good too, he was flying through them. I wish we had a bigger yard so that we could practice more at home.

Lastly, check out this auction on eBay. It's for a 900 gallon aquarium. That's not even the funny part. The funny part is the second picture, which shows two people snorkeling in it!

Marc took me to dinner last night for my birthday. He surprised me by taking me to Todai! Even better, my dinner was free because it was my birthday. I stuffed myself like crazy. Afterwards, you could poke my stomach and it was so full that it was hard, haha.

Then we walked around the mall a bit and I got some PJ's.

We went home, and discovered that Dory now not only has ich still, but seems to have some sort of fungal infection as well. In fact, the tank as a whole didn't look quite right, there was a huge bloom of algae on the front glass. I think I must have done something when we did the water change yesterday.

Of course, I didn't have time to do anything about it, because I ended up having to go down to Fremont because of some family drama. I didn't get back home until almost midnight, so there was nothing left to do but crash in bed. I was pooped.

Does anyone know how to tell if your work has blocked a website? There's a reef site I like to visit, but for the past two days I've been getting a "DNS server failure" notice. It's a perfectly innocuous site, and I've never had anything blocked here at work before, so I'm not sure what's going on. I was having intermittent problems with it from home yesterday too, but I don't know if that's completely unrelated.

Today I'm officially past my mid twenties. Eek! Feeling old.

I had a pretty good birthday weekend. I took Friday off, and spent part of the day helping Marc with getting his mom moved from the hospital to the new board and care facility she's going to be staying at. The place is really nice, and the lady who runs it is a nurse, so I think this place will work out nicely.

Marc and I then spent the afternoon running around doing errands separately. In the evening, we had some friends over to celebrate my birthday. We also got to meet Cynthia's new boyfriend (Bandit went Cujo on him when he tried to take a picture - a few treats later and they were good buds).

Hayden, Bill and Brenda's son, who is now 2, was really adorable. I guess he's seen Finding Nemo a few times, because the first thing he said when he got in our house and saw our fish tank was "Dory!" He really got attached to our fish too, saying "mine!" and hitting me on the butt when I was standing too close to the tank. Then when they were leaving, everyone was like, "Bye Hayden!" and he goes, "Bye Fishies!" and waves at the tank. It was sooo cute.

Bandit even got a few presents for his birthday (I also made him a rice and cottage cheese cake) - a few toys and a gift card to Petsmart, which will probably end up paying for yet another toy. :) (The gift card was from Cynthia, who also got me one, which will probably also go to toys, haha.) Marc and I got him a new leather collar and leash for his birthday.

I guess I've talked about my camera a lot, because I got a lot of gift cards to Best Buy, and I now have enough to buy the XT! Thanks everybody! I'm very excited. Supposedly some Best Buys have gotten the camera in stock, but I called every one in the Bay Area and none of them have it yet.

Marc and I didn't get to bed until 2 am. Whew!

Saturday was pretty laid back. I went herding with Bandit, and Jan showed me the new baby lamb they had. It was only a few days old, and adorable. It was like the size of a cat, this little brown thing with a white head with brown spots.

Sunday we had lunch with my family - I had lobster at this teppanyaki place. Kenny had bought me this HUGE balloon with a smiley face and a birthday hat. I took a picture - I'll post it tomorrow. They also got me flowers and a card, which was really nice. Kenny got me a stuffed Nemo, and Leslie got me an extra set of bongo drums for Donkey Konga. My parents gave me cash, woohoo! We went over to their house afterwards for some yummy cake.

All in all, I had a really good birthday weekend!

Happy Birthday to our boy! He turns TWO today! Hard to believe how time flies.

Bandit was like a new dog yesterday - I hadn't realized how much his energy level had gone down until I saw how he was acting last night. Smiling, running everywhere, being goofy. Seems the vet visit was definitely a good idea. He also seems to love the rice/cottage cheese dinners.

Hammy doesn't seem to even be bothered in the least by her eye. I rinsed it out a bit last night, and I honestly am not sure she even has an eye left. I think she can still see somewhat, because she reacts to movement by that eye, and I can see the eye moving, at least what's left of it. It's pretty horrible looking, I feel awful. I needed Marc's help with cleaning the eye last night, and he was so grossed out.

I'm trying to decide what to do with our 10-gallon fish tank. I can either go freshwater, with some cool little dwarf cichlids, or go saltwater, and keep a pair of breeding clownfish. The saltwater would be a tad more expensive, mostly because of the cost of the fish, but it would be really cool to try to raise clownfish babies. Maintenance would probably be a little easier though, since I have all the food and water already. Any opinions?

Okay, time to eat...something.

We're all falling apart here, I swear.

Marc's mom is still in the hospital - she seems to be eating more now, which is a good sign, and we're hoping she can be discharged Friday.

Yesterday I had to take Bandit to the vet because he hadn't been eating much for the past few days, and he seemed a notch lower than his usual energy level. They did some bloodwork and took an x-ray of his stomach. It doesn't look like he ate anything bad, but his kidney and pancreas levels were a bit elevated, so the vet put him on a bland diet (rice and cottage cheese) and Pepcid AC for a week. The vet bill came out to be $375. Then we have to get his blood rechecked in a couple weeks, which will be another $100 or so. He ate the rice and cottage cheese I made him last night, which is a good sign, and he seemed a bit more chipper.

Marc then called me yesterday to tell me that Jacob had broken his arm on Sunday. Poor guy! We're gonna have to go see him and sign his cast.

Then last night I noticed that Hammy's right eye is completely shut. It looks like she has some sort of eye infection. I can't even see the eyeball anymore. I looked online and some websites said to rinse the eye with saline, so I think I'll try that. The sites also said that hamsters don't see very well anyways, so it's not a big deal to lose use of an eye, but I feel really bad about how she looks.

Dory still has ich too, but she still seems happy and fat for the time being.

Not much happened during the weekend - watched the Oscars, and I discovered that Animal Planet has a new "Animal Cops" show, this time set in San Francisco! I am sadly quite excited about it.