Shiny Newness

Dan and I recently got a new camera, a Canon EOS Rebel T2i. I really need to read the manual, but lately I've been too tired to do too much learning-type stuff. Besides, it takes pretty nifty pictures even when I don't know what I'm doing.

I can't wait to see what it does when I actually know what all the little buttons me. So yeah, I think I'm pretty excited about the new toy.

Dan's excited, too.

See?

More Healthy Updates

Dan's biopsies came back all happy and benign so yay! He's still healing and gross though. The doctor took out his stitches today and said they were healing well, but I think the doctor is on crack. Also, now that the stitches have been removed, the spots have opened back up. Aren't stitches supposed to hold skin together while it grows back? Yeah, anyway, gross.

In less ick-inducing news, Happy is also doing better - her leg is fine now (apparently she really just needed some anti-inflammatory medication) so double yay! However, we still have to remove and biopsy her lump so looks like surgery is planned on next Friday for that...

She better get more than one stitch in her biopsy-induced hole.

Because I'm A Dork

A Tea Review. No Really.

Go play.

Updatey Type Stuffs

A quick little update on all things related to my last post:

• No results yet on Dan's biopsies but dude, his holes? So nasty. They are gray/black on the inside where they were chemically cauterized and I really think the doctor should have used two stitches on each one because they both gape. It's not cool, especially since Dan can't reach them so guess who gets to doctor the ick? That's right. Me. At least I no longer feel like it is going to make me pass out.


• Per the surgeon, it is unlikely (though not impossible) that Happy's bone bits are large enough to cause the kind of pain we are seeing in her leg. Currently the vet is speculating that she pulled a ligament over her knee and he wasn't able to feel it because she was too tense and hurt at the vet for him to find it when he was moving her knee around. So she's going to be on non-steroid anti-inflammatory medication for two weeks. If, at the end of that time, she's not significantly improved, we'll start hunting for other reasons for the pain.


• As for the lump, we're going to wait to see what happens with her leg. That way if it turns out she does need surgery for her leg, she won't be going into surgery twice in such a short period of time. Naturally, if she doesn't need leg surgery, we'll still have surgery to remove (and biopsy) the lump.

Well, I think that's it - down and dirty update on everything!

Of Punches and Spurs

Busy health-related day today. First off, Dan had a doctor's appointment to have a couple of skin spots biopsied. I think I was more freaked out than he was.

Why?

Because they took this

and did this with it

Sorry for the quality... cell phone camera

They used the 6MM punch on the left (the big green one), not the smaller metal one on the right. It left him with big holes that the doctor stitched up (the spot is already stitched up in the second picture). Not cool!

Anyway, he goes back to the doctor next Wednesday to get the stitches removed and they should the biopsy results back by then.

In other health news, Happy had a mini-emergency vet appointment today after Dan's biopsy. This morning we noticed she was favoring her back left foot, limping and not wanting to move around much. So we went to the vet and turns out that she has the kitty-equivalent of bone spurs in her ankle. Poor Happy.

So she's now all cuddled up in her bed, napping and destressing from a very stressful vet visit and anti-inflammatory shot. Tomorrow we'll know if they recommend surgery to remove the extra bone or if we're going to try the anti-inflammatory route for a bit. But... While we were at the vet, they found a little lump under her front arm. So if we do surgery for the bone spurs, they'll remove the lump then. If not, then we'll schedule a lumpectomy for the Happy Doodle separately.

One cute thing to come out of today, though, was Sam. Any time a kitty has to go to the vet, I try to bring the kennel in early so they don't all freak out and hide. Quite often, some of our box-loving kitties will end up hanging out in the kennel until it is needed for transport. Sam is a big box fan, so he typically gets his kennel time in, but he is a big boy and not all our kennels are supersized. Today's kennel was one of the smaller ones. But he still gave it the old college try.

Poor Fat Boy

Happy Saturday the 14th!

I was going to post a little Happy Friday the 13th post yesterday but... I didn't. But a Friday the 13th many years ago (late 80s?) was the day I found my first kitty, so I felt slightly nostalgic yesterday.

Today, however, I just finished a good movie and thought I'd recommend it. It's called King Corn and is about 2 guys that move to Iowa for a year to grow an acre of corn. It's in a similar vein as Food, Inc. and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. So if you are a fan of either of those, go check out.

And hopefully everyone did have a happy Friday the 13th.

More Untimeliness!

I had totally forgotten that I had not yet posted about my birthday. When I took pictures of my anniversary flowers, I realized I still had birthday pictures on my camera. Oops. So look - it's a birthday post... a week and a half late!

My dad's birthday is two days before mine so the celebration was, as always, for both of us. The birthday boy cooked some awesome fish and we had lots of other goodies floating about for a wonderful meal.

Mmm

But you can't have a birthday (or two) without cake!

Coconut Cake-ness

Mom made a fantastic coconut cake. It was both corn-free and gluten-free and required so many substitutions that it might actually be the most difficult cake ever. Since corn-free cream cheese is not all that common (I've only found two brands that are corn-free, Horizon and the Central Market store brand) the icing was made with Crema Mexicana and.... potato starch. Yes, potato starch. However, there was no potato taste to it, just delicious coconut.

And if you are wondering about the odd haircut the cake has, I like coconut flavor but not the texture. So mom sprinkled only half the cake with shredded coconut. Which was nice because that's only one step away from me getting to claim an entire half of the cake by licking it.

The Birthday Girl and Boy

Happy Birthday to Us!

Enter Some Number of Years Here

Yesterday was Dan and my anniversary. He gave me flowers.

Awww

I had been thinking (for quite some time) that it was going to be our 7th anniversary. But Dan and I talked and did a little math and it turns out we've been married 8 years.

Go us!

I think I was getting the 7 year thing stuck in my head because that's how long it took us to pay off the house... Or else I just don't remember when we got married. Or both. Yeah, okay, it's both.)

Random Kitty Video

Since I have happy video editing software again, I'm editing videos. This one is absurdly old but I'm sharing it anyway because it makes me laugh.

News!

As promised, there's big news today. Dan and I stopped by the bank this morning to wire some money and...

Wait, what does that little green box say? "Your mortgage has been paid in full"? Why yes! That is what it says!

Whee!

Because Untimeliness Never Stopped Me

Way back in April, I blogged about the joy that was Baby Sheep Day in Graham and I mentioned that I had video but my video editing software hated me and kept crashing so I couldn't share the baby lamb cuteness.

Well, I finally got that video done. Or almost done. It's close enough. So I thought I'd share it with you (even though I'm sure these lambs qualify as sheep now). It's not timely but it's cute so you should watch it anyway.

Apology via Singing Appliances?

It has been a metric ton of forever since I last updated. Oops. It's because nothing has been happening. Seriously. Dan and I are in hibernation mode until... well, Friday. But on Friday there should be some really good news. So yeah, that's exciting. Well, to me. Because I know what it is. And you don't.

Okay, okay. You probably do know what it is because, chances are, if you are reading this you actually know me and what have I been talking about since forever? But on the off chance that this is entertaining (or at least occupying) someone that doesn't actually know me... News. Friday.

Well, let's say Saturday because seriously, I'm not so hot at the speedy updating (something I will prove in an upcoming post - like you need more evidence).

Anyway, the point of this post: This weekend I broke my Zojirushi. Which is horrible because I simply don't know how to operate properly without it. Or at least make tea without it. The hour after I broke it was so dreadful that I had to immediately run to Amazon and buy another one, budgetary hibernation mode or not. This one. Which came in today.

Happy day!

To make it even happier, my lovely electric water heater? It sings. Yes, sings.

I love the Japanese.

Eep!

It's been two weeks since I posted. Yikes! It's a running theme apparently though. I just don't have enough going on or enough motivation to frequently update my blog. But I thought it was about time to do a little update, so here we go.

The weather has been sunny and hot lately, which means mentally I'm doing pretty good. It also means that a lot of my time is being spent outside by the pool. See my fancy pool?

Aren't you jealous? That's pretty much my after work and weekend pool set up. My chair, my towel, my eReader and my pool. It's simultaneously wonderful and sad because it makes me crave a real pool.

Other things going on in life: I've been (im)patiently waiting for my last day at work.

It's getting closer and closer!

Even closer though, is the Big Day. Dan and I are planning to pay off the house for my birthday next month so that's less than a month away. OMG. It's so close and quite a big deal. That's pretty much meant that our budgetary belts have been really tightened which is one reason that I've had nothing to blog about. Dan and I joke about sitting around in the dark for the next month to save money. While we haven't gone that far, we aren't doing anything extra this month. So yeah, we're boring. And so is my blog.

I have managed to do one thing that's fairly exciting though, well at least to me. I made gumbo.

Seriously, it's so awesome. I really hope I can repeat it. It's a variation of the recipe in The Joy of Cooking. There are some changes because I am apparently genetically predisposed to being unable to exactly follow a recipe. But yeah, so tasty.

Not quite as tasty but just as wonderful: the Bitty. She's apparently decided to be the official nap kitty of the Zimmmermann household.

Speaking of kitties, I just have to share a picture of my nephew-kitty, Tom.

This is Miho and Kei's kitty and isn't he just a doll? He's totally perfected that, "Who? Me? I didn't do anything" look of innocence. So cute!

Speaking of cute kitties, check out this news article my dad sent me: Bionic Kitty. The kitty involved looks lots like Happy-cat. I think that's the reason Dan and I had the same response to the article, saying "She doesn't need it but I'd be totally willing to get Happy-Doodle a prosthetic tail."

And that's about it. I managed to make a fairly long post about the boring-ness of life, huh? The only thing I have left to share is a little something that made me giggle on my way to work.

U IRK ME

Hehe!

Oh! And one final note: I still love my dishwasher. I never thought I'd love an appliance but there you go. It's seriously awesome. So if you need a new dishwasher, go get a Bosch. Awe. Some.

Grrr

Our across-the-street neighbors are absurdly loud. Not only do they own (and attempt to street park) roughly 4.7 million different trucks and SUVs, but apparently on weekends they decide to weld them all together and then use a sander to take them apart again.

Small Dash of Kittiness

It's a fact of life that Kitties + Boxes = Overwhelming Cuteness.

See?

And it's not the best picture, but it demonstrates the above equation so well, I had to share.

Of course, a box is not required for cuteness. Sometimes it comes naturally. Like during naptime.

Awwww.

More Crawfish

It's that time of year again - or at least it was two weeks ago. Mudbug Madness!

Yes, food and music and heat and humidity. Shreveport isn't the most exotic locale, but it's always nice to get away, even if it is only four hours away.

Most years, there's a fair number of people in our group, but this year's group was a bit thin.

Still fun, though. And the lack of socializing (or limited socializing) made it more vacation like so it was pretty nice.

Traditionally we've stayed at the Holiday Inn in Shreveport, but this year we decided not to. Mostly because that hotel? Kind of old with horrid service and a pretty expensive rate. So this year we went across the street to the Best Western.

Great service (seriously, I never knew people in Shreveport were that friendly!), nice hotel, big pool, great view...

Okay, so maybe the view wasn't that great. But the rest of the hotel (and the service) was good... and as quirky as the view. The water in the shower hung out at luke warm, the rooms were different sizes, the microwave had a turn dial, the maid had to give us her key so we could unlock the refrigerator... Quirky is a good word for it. But the cheerfulness of the people and the really awesome pool made it a lovely place.

Really wish I could have brought the pool home with me. Instead I'm gonna have to blow mine up this weekend. Hopefully there won't be too many holes to patch...

Oh, and yeah. There was crawfish. And cayenne. And more crawfish.

And a pool.