This Is The Face Of...

This is the face of bladder infection:

Poor Big Girl

Yes, everyone give Ashes a nice e-cuddle. She's not feeling 100%. She's got a pretty bad bladder infection. We went to the vet today and she got an antibiotic shot that will last for two weeks and therefore hopefully take care of the problem.

This may or may not have any relation to her constantly higher-than-normal kidney levels but at this point, I don't think it benefits us to find out. We can assume her levels are high (as they have been at every check up in the past 6 years) but even if they are high, she doesn't like (and thus won't eat) the kidney-health kitty food. And Dan and I agree that we'd rather her eat her not-healthy food instead of stare at healthy food.

Mentally, I'm kind of preparing myself for Ashes to pass away with kidney failure sometime sort of soon-ish. Sometimes I start thinking about this and it leads me to not feeding her the "junk food" (Whiskas Tuna in Sauce - total crap as far as ingredients go but apparently tastes great) and then she starts to lose weight. She was at nine pounds today and should be closer to ten for her breed. So back on the junk food she goes! She was very happy when we got back from the vet and I gave her a pouch of it. She almost dances while waiting for it. So cute.

Anyway, I'm glad that Ashes has a bladder infection for the sole reason that if it was kitty incontinence, she was going to have to wear diapers and that's just not dignified. (I did have some picked out, just in case, that I found here and here). I still kind of want to buy some. But maybe I'll make Bitty wear them. Because I'm mean like that.

Yay!

Just a quick update to say the AC is back working (yay!) as are my laptop's USB ports (yay!).

As far as the laptop goes, as many issues as we've had with it, I've gotten to know Dell support pretty well. I have to say, their online tech chat is very helpful. Go them!

And speaking of awesomeness - yay for the repair company that came out to our house at 9:30pm to fix our AC - and didn't charge us through the nose for fixing our AC. Yay!

Yays all around!

And now...

And now my computer's USB drives refuse to recognize anything.

Seriously. Did I mention I was sick of all this?

BTW, the AC is still broken but a repairman is moments away.

I really hope we don't need parts.

Have I mentioned it is 87 degrees in the house? No? It is.

Our AC Isn't Working.

It's blowing, but it's blowing warm air.

Seriously.

I've had enough of this.

I Shot The Turkey! (But I Didn't Shoot the Deputy)

This year for Father's Day, Dan and I went to Graham to spend Saturday night and Sunday with my dad. It was food- and fun-filled. Part of the fun bit was on Sunday after church when we went to the Graham Rifle and Pistol Club.

We went to go check out Dad's newest gun, a .223 rifle.

Dad educating Dan on the finer points of lining up the scope.

Everyone did a good job and it was lots of fun. We were also the only ones out there, so that was nice.

A short video of Dad shooting the rifle... sadly, the true loudness of it isn't translated onto film.

But the truly cool bit of the day (in my opinion, which in this blog, is the only one that counts), is that I shot the turkey.

Posing With My "Kill"

That's right. I shot the turkey. The turkey that was over four hundred yards away (it's actually 385 meters or 421 yards). Over four hundred yards. That's really far. How far? Well, here's a shot of the range as seen from the turkey's position.

Can you see the covered area where we were shooting from? It's right there in the middle of the shot. See? Long ways!

In case you are wondering, I shot the turkey towards the tail feathers a bit. You can see where I hit in this next picture - it's the only fresh silver mark on it (the others are old shots that have been painted over).

Yeah, so it's not in the exact center of the turkey. But, dude. I. Shot. The turkey.

Waterfalls are Nice... But Not in the Laundry Room

So, this weekend was exciting. It started Friday night when the drip pan (or whatever it is called) under the AC unit in the attic bucked, spilling water into our attic... and then down into our laundry room.

Apparently the drain pipe coming from the pan was clogged. The pan collected so much water that it got too heavy and buckled, splashing water out and down.

It could have been much worse, though. Where the water fell was right on the doorway to our laundry room and it managed to miss most of the sheet rock and basically come down right through the doorway. Or course, it hit the door jam and that sort of interrupted the water flow. But the water decided to rain out from between the door jam and molding. So yeah, that was fun.

Site of the Temporary Waterfall.
All the ripples and cracks in the paint? Yeah, not there before

All in all, I think we were pretty lucky. A little sanding and some paint should have this fixed up good as new. And I even braved the attic (something I have a bit of a phobia of) so go me!

Plus, now we know that we have a drip pan up there and a drainage pipe that we periodically need to check to make sure is actually, you know, draining.

Learn something new everyday!

Down

I have been a bit down lately, so just thought I'd post something that makes me smile. Okay, a few things that make me smile.

YAY!

CONGRATULATIONS to the Pittsburgh Penguins, winners of the Stanley Cup.

WOOOOO! Go other birds that aren't the Ducks! And yay for ex-Duck Chris Kunitz for getting his name on the cup twice. YAY!



And can I just say, TACKY Detroit fans for booing. SHAME ON YOU!

Cuteness!

The cuteness begins at about :38. Look at the little lips!!!!

%&@*!^#

I don't know how people go days without power. Last night was not cool. Dan and I resorted to playing Monopoly (he totally kicked my ass).

Power returned just before four this morning, putting the outage at about a total of ten hours.

It's a Girl!

Eddie, our lovely Qualex service guy (Qualex is the company Dell contracts for their on-site service) stopped by today to take the pink parts off my old laptop and put them on my boy blue laptop. So now the boy laptop is a girl laptop. Yay! No more manly blue!

Part of me is worried that something with think pinkness will make this new laptop go bad. Fingers crossed! I hope everything stays happy because I am glad to have my pinkess back.

BTW, Dan found a nifty site, The Pink Laptop Blog. Right up my alley, yes?

Computer Sex Change

Ah, Dell.

So, Dell is supposed to be replacing my issue-laden pinkeness with new pinkness, right? And they sent me a blue laptop instead of a pink one three weeks ago, right? Dan called, said, uh this isn't pink, they had us send it back, they put in an order for a pink one and we waited.

And waited.

Dan called again. Apparently, they can't send out any pink ones so the correct order hadn't been able to be processed so they did nothing, just let the order sit there. Once they were reminded that, you know, we are still having issues over here, thank you! they sent us another blue one and said they'd dispatch the pink parts out to have someone replace them on-site.

So we get the blue one in. Dan calls about getting the pink parts. And is told that they don't have any in stock and don't know when they'll get any so I'm stuck with blue.

My pretty girlie pink laptop is now a boy.

Snips and snails and puppy dog tails...

Don't get me wrong, when the light hits it just right, it is a very pretty blue as you can see in the above picture. But more often than not, the light isn't hitting it just right and it is a boring, manly, so-dark-navy-it-is-almost-black blue.

Dell sucks.

The only plus on this is that I gained 90 gig of hard drive space with the new blue laptop. So that's good.

But I want pink, dammit.

Stupid Dell.

Anyone have a Sony or Lenovo? Do they make pink laptops? Because, yeah, Dell's getting ready to go on my list of sucky computer vendors just like Gateway did. Though Gateway gained a listing due to the utter crap they turned out in laptop form. Dell's nomination is for their stupid customer service that doesn't know what is going on and can't get me a freakin' pink laptop. And that's ignoring the replacement of the three motherboards, two video cards, RAM, a keyboard... and a partridge in a pear tree.

Because it is cute...

The article isn't as cute but if you want to read it, it is here

I want one!

...but I think the cats would eat it.

Kind of looks a post-yurking like a hairball, doesn't it? In a cute way.

Cup Raise

Every time I see this, I can't help but think of what a great commercial it is.