Pressured, lots of little, another loss, project pics

Let’s start off with a Spook update. Last time we left her the skin around the base of her ear was peeling back, she was hardly eating a thing, her pupils were two different sizes and she was basically a mess.  Well we have been continuing the unpleasant task of forcing an antibiotic suspension down her throat every night with varying degrees of success.  Well the update is Spook is still a mess but less of one.

There has been a noticeable increase in her food consumption over the past few days, although her eating process results in a huge mess spread around the plate.  As she eats she sometimes will shake her head, propelling food around the area.  Her pupils are almost the same size now and she seems a bit more alert.  She still is carrying her head cocked to the left and she still has these weird sounding sneezing fits.  Still, there is definitely some improvement in her condition and she continues to be a purr machine, seemingly happy just to be still walking the planet.  So I am going to get more of the antibiotics and pain meds from the vet this week and we will just continue drugging her up hoping her condition continues to improve.  If it doesn’t at least we tried our best.

This weekend I had a bunch of small projects to do instead of a couple big ones.  The weather this weekend was absolutely perfect for working outside with highs in the 70’s with low humidity.  It was the type of weather that made me want to move to Florida in the first place.

Saturday morning Ali met up with her running partners and did a 7 mile run.  Not only did she do it but she did it pretty easily.  I can’t tell you how proud I am of Ali’s recent running accomplishments.  She has made some remarkable strides in her fitness level in a short period of time.  She is right on track to meet her goal of running in a half marathon in January which is a hell of a feat.

During the day I went to Home Depot while Ali mowed the back yard.  I had my flat bed loaded up with all sorts of different items including cement, weed and feed, seeds, sod pieces and even a 20 foot ladder. 

When I got home I knocked out a bunch of the small projects.  Ali joined me in the garden where we direct seeded a bunch of stuff including carrots, corn, peas and beets.  We made a raised, soft bed for the carrot seeds, hoping to avoid crowing mutant carrots again this year due to compacted soil.

We took mom out for dinner a couple days early for her birthday.  We went to a place mom suggested.  We had early 5:30 reservations.  We were running a bit late which I knew would stress mom out.  She obsesses about this sort of stuff.  On the way there she speculated that they may give away our table since we would be almost 15 minutes late.  I assured her things would be fine and indeed they were. 

We had a mostly enjoyable meal.  The most important thing, the food was good.  Our service was sort of strange.  Our waiter was very polite, through out the meal he had to say “Thank you” at least 25 times.  Although courteous the guy also seemed to be rather forgetful.  He had to be reminded several times to do things like get mom’s water, turn on the outside heater and several other things.  He also forgot little details like bringing out straws for the water/soft drinks, lemon for mom’s water and creamer for the coffee we had later in the meal.  It was hard to get pissed at the guy though since he was thanking us constantly.  Despite the little annoying service quirks we had a nice meal.

Once we got back to mom’s I insisted on getting her voice mail set up on her new cell phone, something she never had before.  Her new phone is cool, it’s a Motorola flip phone that has data capability although we don’t have that turned on since mom wouldn’t use it.  While I was playing around with the phone I took a silly picture of myself and set it as the background of mom’s phone home screen.  Now she can simply open her phone whenever she wants to see my angelic face.

On Sunday I kept myself busy most of the day since the Eagles didn’t play until 4pm.  The first thing I did was rotate the tires on the Camry.  This job is made easier by the fact that I have two floor jacks so I can have two tires off at once.  The Camry Hybrid has been a great car for us although there has been one thing that has been less than great, the f’ing tires.

  We are on our second set of tires and they are now suffering from the same problem as the first set, uneven wear that causes a lot of road noise on certain surfaces.  I have attributed the problem to some sort of alignment problem that was present from day one.  I had the dealer supposedly make SURE the alignment was good when the second set of tires were installed yet they wore in the exact same manner and time frame as the first set.  It pisses me off.

I then spent a few hours pressure washing both the new shed and the old shed.  Both shed’s needed cleaning badly.  A pressure washer is must have gear in south Florida as mildew and algae forms on surfaces everywhere due to the climate.  Pressure washing is wet work, if you happen to be downwind from what you are cleaning you can get very wet, very quickly.  The large shed took much longer than the new shed since it is roughly double the size and requires me to wash the roof as well.  The new shed has a shingle roof which does not require the same maintenance.  Both sheds look considerably better after my efforts.

So we sat down to watch the Eagles game.  I had already predicted the Eagles would lose the game to my buddy at work.  They suck on the West Coast, they lost to the stinking Raiders a few weeks ago, the Chargers are a better team.  Unfortunately I turned out to be accurate in my prediction.  If you saw that McNabb threw for 450 yards and two td’s you would assume they smashed their opponents right?  Nope.  Instead the Eagles would move the ball, get inside the 10 yard line and then fall apart due to their total lack of a running game.  Three times they settled for short field goals.

The defense sucked, not being able to stop the Chargers for the majority of the game.  I was flabbergasted when I kept seeing defensive players (linebackers a d-backs)on the field whose names I had never seen before.  Who the f are these guys and why are they playing? Well whatever their names were they didn’t play well.  Once the Eagles found themselves in a come back situation I knew we were done and McNabb proved me a sage, once again failing to lead his team to a come from behind win, something he is spectacularly miserable at doing.

After the game I was of course annoyed and I posted these questions on Facebook.

 I walked around yesterday and took some pics of the various projects and items I have been talking about but not posting pictures of, enjoy.