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Giardia, Evil is thy name / ELVIS WEDNESDAY

Yet another afternoon spent at the vet's office, some more tests, and - an answer! Perhaps not THE answer, but we're getting somewhere. Suki's intestinal infection has been brought on by a protozan (single celled organism) called Giardia. She's got cooties! And is contagious! And hates her new medication!

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Vet Clinic Groupie Part 2

Warning: This post is boring unless you currently have a sick dog.

To summarize, UsualVetHospital = honkified, however _one_ of the three vets at UsualVetHospital is a very hopeful candidate for being Suki's lifetime vet. Kind of liking a person, but not being wild about their family, and having to play nice with their family in order to keep everything peaceful.

I cancelled Suki's appointment with NewVetHospital and I'm going to stick with UsualVetHospital, but only see the *recently-educated-and-motivated-to-research-problems* FriendlyVet there, rather than his very kind but out-of-date associates, his father, and his uncle. (For some bizarre reason, Suki seems go crash out on Fridays more often than other days, and FriendlyVet is off work on Fridays, which is why his uncle and father have seen Suki). It means alot to me that Suki is wild about FriendlyVet, he's officially enchanted by her, and he is familiar with her medical history. Also? FriendlyVet is the only person who can possibly decypner his uncle and father's handwriting.

That's correct, UsualVetHospital does not use computers, and all their records are handwritten. That should have been a clue to me that they might also practice outdated medicine - but I was very impressed with their very reasonable prices. I'll attempt to avoid whining about money (or specifically the lack of) by sharing my exasperated comment to Suki, after ANOTHER emergency visit (and more antibiotics) yesterday; "If I find myself dancing around a pole to pay bills, I'm blaming you" In my defense, I thought I was thinking it and not saying it until the office gals started cracking up.

I'm not looking forward to explaining this to FavoriteVet, but hopefully he will understand, as some of his coworkers have outdated approaches to practicing vetrinary medicine.

SOOOooooooo, I'll be hanging out with FriendlyVet this afternoon; we're sending blood samples to Texas A&M for uber-diagnostic tests. When the results are in (three weeks from now) I'll send them off to FavoriteVet so I can share FavoriteVet's ideas with FriendlyVet and finally, hopefully, figure out what the hell is wrong with my dog.

Thanks for sticking around through all these whiny posts, I'll be back to snarky commentary in no time.

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Vet clinic groupie

Guess where I spent Friday evening? (and dropped yet another wad o'money . . . 'cause groceries are for weenies . . . planned on clearing out those cabinets anyway . . . alright, now I'm rambling)

*Hopefully* Suki's blood test results will offer some answers to "what the hell is going on, anyway?" The Rosetta Stone of puppy health should be arriving in about two hours. I've managed to not think about it all weekend, but now that the time is near, it occurs to me that I might find out that she won't get better, or that I really don't have the means to purchase the medical attention she requires.

Scary thoughts.

I'll update later this morning. I'm off to make coffee!

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Good Night, and Good Luck

Last night, I watched George Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck" for the second time - I'm very happy to report that I was just as awestruck the second time around.

I loves me some brave, badass reporters.

If you have never seen this movie - GO FORTH AND RENT IT!
Don't be intimidated by the black&white format, the lack of knee-slapping humor, and the fact that George is oddly not especially hot. If you want hottie George Clooney, watch "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?", even though the title suggests that you're in for a crappy movie.

But briefly back to "Good Night, and Good Luck"; I highly reccomend using the subtitles, but I should point out that I've got slightly crappy ears. (More like my brain doesn't sort out sounds very well - if there is too much background noise, or especially if music is playing, people's voices go all Charlie Brown Adult on me, and I have to read lips to keep track of what all the waa waaing is about. I like to think my brain is way more interested in music than verbal blah blah. As a highschooler, I once really pissed off a date when my answer to "how do you like [The Phantom of the Opera] so far?" was "it's fantastic, but the second violin is a little sharp".) But I digress.

Have a fantastico weekend everybody - I'll be home instead of visiting my in-laws, because my dog's bowel movements may be unpredictable as she comes off her most recent round of antibiotics. *applause* Yes, the threat of puppy butt is deterrant enough for family members to say "maybe it'd be best if you visited next weekend instead. I may have stumbled onto something!

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making admissions

Beth from SoTheFishSaid made a musical admission today, and I commend her for so openly speaking/typing about enjoying Billy Joel's music. As I snicker, I'm being two-faced; I *really* have no room to knock her for jamming out to "William Martin" (yeah, I"d go for "Billy" too). I really enjoy approximately 25% of Billy Joel's work. In fact, my imaginary fantasy cover band play list includes "Still Rock and Roll". I'd wear the bad suit, white tie, tennis shoes, look ever so slightly hung over, and rock the hell out.

My dirty secret?

When I was 16, I was frightened of driving in the dark, and I found that I could get myself home (in an '89 Chevy Nova) from my glorious burger-flipping job _without_panicking_ by listening to Lionel Richie's "Dancing on the Ceiling" album. I have had that cassette since I was _6_ years old folks! I distinctly remember my friends mom asking me if I'd like a Lionel Ritchie or Bruce Springstien album for my birthday, and I still stand by my choice. (The cassete player also doubled as a night-light).

Since then, I have come to the conclusion that I must have poor night vision, but I'm no longer intimidated by driving at night - phew!

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Sacred Heart

I haven't had the opportunity to prepare your Wednesday Elvis fix, so I will divert your attention by jangling shiny keys, then point you in the direction of
The First Church of Elvis.

May God have mercy on my soul!

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Adventures in Consumerism

I'm feeling both proud and meek about purchasing a new laptop.

Proud: It's freaking sweet, and I'll be back to sorting over 20gb of music in no time.

Meek: I didn't pay cash.

~*~

it's hella-late late and I should get some sle3p, yet I'm feeling obsessively compelled to load as much music as possible. I'm fighting that compulsion so don't find myself here at 7am, surrounded by CDs and cases. Instead I'm rating every single track I've listened to while trying to re-establish Quicken; all my hawk-like financial tracking became digital garbage when my old hard drive collapsed. So, I've got lots of data entry to do, "ATM POS" becomes "Marathon" in the Auto-Fuel category, blah blah blah. On another compulsion-fighting front, I'm only tracking transactions after the first of the year. Bleh - so much to do!

I'm too paranoid to load tunes from my iPod onto my computer; apparently there is a possibility that my computer will wipe the iPod's memory if I don't run a ripping program properly. Sooooooo, I'll be leaving that task to the techies. I'm certain that I'd be depressed for months if I lost my *entire* MP3 collection. Have I mentioned that music keeps me a happy camper?

My message to you: USE AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE!

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collapsed hard drive

gah, it's like an ice pick to the ribcage.

R2D2 is D-E-A-D. The noble tech-geeks removed his harddrive in order to retrieve as much information as possible. One person held his harddrive at an angle while another person sprayed freezing air on it - but finally he died. Fortunately, the geeks were able to retrieve my digital photo collection before R2's harddrive collapsed.

But my music collection was lost

the music collection I've been feeding, tweaking, taming, sorting, and loving for the past 5 years. I had over 14 days worth of music - yes, I could listen to my collection non-stop for TWO WEEKS and not hear the same track twice. All those playlists, created for specific people, places, and purposes - are GONE.

I have about 80% of the collection on my iPod, which I am guarding as if it were an infant.

Amish "if you don't have money, don't spend money" mentality be damned, I want a new Mac and I want it NOW.

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R.I.P. R2D2?

My Mac laptop, R2D2, has "hard drive failure" and is undergoing it's last rites; tech geeks are currently trying to pull all my digital photos and my massive music collection from it.

I know that I intended to delete some borderline inappropriate photos of little 'ol me - but don't remember if I actually did. If the tech shop collectively bursts into laughter when I walk in, I'll have my answer.

but I digress

I have a decision to make: spend around $500 to revive the computer (by putting a new hard drive in) or purchase a new laptop?

Factors:

It might be really stupid to put a new hard drive on a five-year-old laptop that isn't as badass as I require.

what would you do?

2 comments

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Wednesday, Jun. 28, 2006 - 8:54 a.m.

the FIRST Wednesday Elvis Sighting!

I present to you, oh blogoshpere, the new cast of "The View".

I've only seen the SNL mock version of the show, let me know if I'm actually missing out on anything.

Check out Nikki's growing collection of Elvi!

4 comments

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