miscellaneous everything

Monday, June 11, 2012

slow day, productive but not very

Pepper and Slink trying to figure out what’s going on. (click to see it big!)

Another day of getting back-burnered stuff done. Mainly cleaning up comment spam on two different websites and adding to the blacklists. Installing a program, Carefree Ad Manager by Will Bontrager, that counts impressions and clicks on ads so we can tell advertisers how well (or not) their ads are doing. Which will let us offer another service to our advertisers, perhaps.

What I didn’t get to, again, was updating our company website or company Facebook page. Or cleaning the house. Spent a good amount of time last weekend getting rid of paper so I could clear it off my desk—I tossed and shredded enough to fill at least one huge trash bag. I wanted to empty crap from at least one office cupboard this weekend, but didn’t get a chance. Nor did I get any gardening done—I wanted to at least get one pot planted. Tomorrow I will.

My goals this week, aside from work: spend about 30 minutes a day catching up with the cleaning and another 30 minutes in the garden. And not watch the political blowhard pundits flapping their jaws for at least a few more days. I miss the days when the 24-hours news channels had, you know, news and not wall-to-wall bullshit opinion shows, full of the sound and fury ...

I am being summoned for dinner.

posted by lee on 06/11/12 at 12:36 AM
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Monday, May 28, 2012

how does my garden grow? wild

Steamy out today—lots of sun and lots of muggy. I think we need to get some fresher Off as the stuff we have now doesn’t seem to be working anymore (it’s about five years old ... )

We did get some tomatoes and other plants—the garden is not quite ready for planting, still a little too muddy. And did I say it’s steamy out today? I played with the dogs instead.

one of Stanley’s peonies (click to see it big!)

the garden is wonderfully wild (click to see it big!)

beautiful but vicious rugosa (click to see it big!)

we even have wild roses in our tree tops (click to see it big!)

heart stopping digitalis (click to see it big!)

What fun is there in having new software if you don’t play with it?

dali digitalis, © lee fleming, 2012

posted by lee on 05/28/12 at 09:49 PM
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creature features

No particular point to this entry. I just feel like posting some photos of our creatures. Sans Pepper. She remains as hard for me to photograph as she can (Stanley gets better photos of her).

Ruby patiently waiting for her cookies (click to see it big!)

Ruby is always worried about something (like not getting her cookies) (click to see it big!)

Bingo trying to hide from whatever the latest indignity is that Stanley wants to inflict on her. Like taking her picture. She is afraid of the sound of velcro. (click to see it big!)

Slink literally keeping an eye on what’s going on. © lee fleming, 2012 (click to see it big!)

posted by lee on 05/28/12 at 05:13 PM
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Sunday, May 20, 2012

resurrection?

It’s been a long time. I miss blogging.

Things garden:

The climbing roses started blooming last week. (click to see it big!)

The baptista is hidden in the bramble this year. I need to trim the dead rugosa branches out, but they’re so awful to deal with. (click to see it big!)

Stanley decided to bite the bullet and trim the hedge—we couldn’t see to get out of our driveway safely! (click to see it big!)

the weekend is the only time to do it—traffic is deadly on weekdays as Strawberry Hill Avenue turns into a narrow version of I-95. (click to see it big!)

The hedge looks great, the front is complete. However, Stanley fell off the ladder when he was climbing down, and has a scrape on the back of his head and he hurt his wrist. He didn’t knock himself out and he says he’s ok. I plan to hold the ladder the next time—I couldn’t bear it if he ended up in the hospital.

We lost Twitch Thanksgiving weekend. He had a heart murmur and we knew he was on borrowed time, but it still hit us hard. Slink was lost without him, so we knew we needed to get him a buddy. Pepper adopted us when we met her at the Connecticut Humane Society in Westport on December 1, 2012. She’s a tuxedo cat and pretty much runs the house buy now.

Slink and Pepper are watching the squirrels and birds on the porch. We have a bird feeder and it provides lots of entertainment for them (and us) (click to see it big!)

Slink is such a gorgeous, strange cat. He likes to hang out on his cushion while I work, but keeps a wary eye out for Bingo and Ruby. Especially Ruby. (click to see it big!)

I’ve neglected the housekeeping on the blog—it’s going to take a while to clean out all the spam comments that have accumulated. And upgrade it to the latest and greatest and final version of ExpressionEngine 1x. I need to update the home page to include photos of our current furry family, and update other pages. I’ll get it done.

I do miss blogging. Facebook just doesn’t do it for me—it’s too impersonal. Now that I’ve taken the first step in getting back, I hope I keep going.

the best part of spring, besides all the other good things about spring (click to see it big!)

posted by lee on 05/20/12 at 09:35 PM
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Thursday, January 27, 2011

noooo, please, uncle, enough already!

More snow. Another 17 inches. Or 15 inches, depending on what measurement you believe. Yesterday we got three inches. I am so tired. Another day of work lost to shoveling. Stanley did most of it (he’s still out working on enough more so we have a turnaround). We’re legal, the sidewalk has a foot-wide path between 3.5-feet-tall snow walls. The car is cleared off, including the top so we don’t get a ticket.

posted by lee on 01/27/11 at 10:17 PM
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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

just ‘cause

posted by lee on 01/25/11 at 10:52 PM
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ruby again

It’s been such a worrying thing I dread the thought of posting the entire story, so I’ll just refer you to Stanley’s blog (which he is finally resurrecting) to read the details.

What he doesn’t go into detail about is that the perforation was caused by the Deramaxx that was prescribed by vet Matthew Palmisano of VCA/Norwalk, who did the fifth knee surgery operation. We still don’t know why he prescribed this as he KNEW—or should have known since it was on the paperwork we gave him—Ruby was getting carafate and pepcid—stuff to soothe her stomach because an ulcer was suspected (she did not get Deramaxx after her 4th surgery). I suspect he didn’t bother reading what meds she was on and just prescribed the standard post-op stuff—SOP for far too many specialists, both animal docs and human docs. So, he might be a fine orthopedic surgeon and he might have done a fine job on Ruby, but if he kills the dog in the process because he’s careless about reading her case history, he’s not such a great vet, is he?

What really made us angry was the people at VCA—the receptionists treating us like shit and the vets we saw, one of whom was the medical director or something, denying VCA did anything wrong, arguing with us about it. And then telling us that it would cost us between $6500 and $7600 for them to fix Dr. Palmisano’s mistake with only a 50% chance of Ruby even recovering.

All I could think of is all the pain Ruby would go through at that place, how frightened she’d be, and to go through all of that with a shitty prognosis, I just couldn’t do it to her and we just couldn’t afford it, not for such an awful prognosis.

Dr. Kurose and the staff at Strawberry Hill Animal Hospital saved Ruby—she’s still doing well (knock on wood)—which amazes us. He asked if he could try to save her and assured me that he would make sure she was on pain medication, and we knew she loves the staff at SHAH, so she wouldn’t be so alone and frightened. I wept when he offered to try to save her. He and the staff did a wonderful job—we just have to figure out how we can repay them for all the extra miles they went to save Ruby’s life.

Since our encounter with VCA, we’ve heard nothing but bad things about them. We weren’t especially happy with them after our first encounter with them when Ginger needed to be rehydrated back in 2008 during her battle with lymphoma. They charged way too much money for what they did and when we got her back, she smelled so bad we couldn’t believe it—she didn’t smell bad when we brought her in less than 24 hours earlier. So I have my doubts about the sanitary conditions there.

One colleague told us they ruled out the condition that actually killed his dog, and another colleague told us they charged a fortune for exploratory surgery to try to figure out what was wrong with his dog.

And this time, VCA charged us $1000 for a two-hour emergency stay, giving her an ultrasound and some tests to see what was wrong with her (they didn’t even locate the perforation).

The VCA receptionists were horrible—we had no idea why we had to fill out more paperwork for Ruby when they had just seen her a couple of days before we brought her in and one receptionist tracked us down in the clinic to hand us a bill when we had no idea what was going on, and laughed when we told her we had no idea what was going on.

We need to find another emergency animal hospital—I never want to go back to VCA unless we have absolutely no choice. I’ll drive to New Haven if I have to.

Okay, my rant is done I think.

posted by lee on 01/25/11 at 09:58 PM
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Friday, January 07, 2011

winter

Another snow storm today. Not nearly as bad as the Boxing Day blizzard, but wet, sloppy, and beautiful. A daytime storm, so we watched it as we worked.

Twitch, keeping warm by the exhaust fan. The scene out the window was heavy, sloppy snow. (click to enlarge)

Stanley hung a couple of bird feeders for me. We have a huge bag of seed, which I thought would last a couple of years. But no—it’s amazing how much seed they eat. Stanley has filled the feeders several times in just a couple of weeks.

It’s hard to get good pictures through the window. There is a pair of cardinals that gorge themselves daily. Mama cardinal likes the gourd feeder, but papa cardinal likes the perch feeder. And, so far, the squirrels haven’t figured out how to steal the seeds.

A sparrow chows down (click to enlarge)

Hard to see in this shot, but here is a male cardinal getting ready to perch on the bird feeder and eat dinner. (click to enlarge)

posted by lee on 01/07/11 at 09:37 PM
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Saturday, January 01, 2011

ruby, ruby, operation #4

Ruby’s knee just wasn’t healing. She already had three operations. The first installed one band to stabilize the patella. She broke that. The vet put another, stronger band in for the second operation. No dice—she broke that one, too. For the third operation, he put in two pins. She broke on of the pins and the other one wasn’t strong enough to hold the patella where it should be. So, Dr. Edward Kurose (of Strawberry Hill Animal Hospital—a wonderful place with wonderful staff) called on Monday to tell us he’d consulted with another orthopedist and asked us to bring Ruby in again, for one more shot.

This time, he put longer pins in and he splinted her. She acted at the vet’s like her leg had been cut off, getting all kinds of sympathy from them (aka food) because poor Ruby couldn’t walk with her cast. Hah! When they brought her out to us, she immediately headed for the door—she wanted to GO HOME (and eat—Stanley always feeds her when she gets home from the vet). She was fast, too, I could barely keep up with her (I was holding her sling). She gets around very well, though not so much on the stairs (Stanley helps her up and down with the sling).

I really, really hope this works—I don’t care that she hates the splint, she’s gonna wear it for the entire ten days to two weeks so she doesn’t wreck Dr. Kurose’s work again. This case has him baffled because she shouldn’t be able to exert the kind of pressure on the bands and pins that would break them.

The bad thing about this all is though she’s supposed to lose weight, she’s been gaining it because she’s getting no exercise—even though Stanley is feeding her significantly less. Before the operations, she would go up and down the stairs several times a day—now it’s just once up and once down. She can’t chase the cats or run to the door to bark at the mail guy or the kids going home from school. She’s never been particularly active (she’s very lazy), but she did get a lot more exercise.

Ruby finally getting her chow (click to enlarge)

And she found a dog cookie Bingo hadn’t gotten around to eating. Too bad, Bingo! (click to enlarge)

Did I mention how much we love the staff at Strawberry Hill Animal Hospital? If we ever moved, it couldn’t be too far away because we’re never changing our vet practice!

posted by lee on 01/01/11 at 12:14 AM
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Sunday, December 26, 2010

happy dog on christmas

Christmas was very good for dogs (and me) this year.

Rawhide to chew, lots of squeaky toys, what more could Bingo want? Tattoo is in the background—don’t know what he’s looking for. (click to enlarge)

posted by lee on 12/26/10 at 02:44 AM
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