conjurdude

things are weird. feast and famine. highs and lows. good days and bad. I've been missing my rabbits terribly. I think of them a lot. I've also been missing Florida. I really do want to move down there. I've been trying to get in shape the last several months. I challenged myself to get back to 225 lbs. I started at 267.5, and I've got, as of Thursday morning's weigh-in, 7.3 pounds to go to get there.

I'm also trying to look after my mental health, and one of the things i'm trying to do, via healthmonth.com, is go on at least one of what they like to call a "friend date" per week. so far so successful in April, but we'll see…I really do like socializing, but living so far away from work and most of my co-workers makes it difficult.

Dad's recuperating from his nephrectomy, and the doctors seem to think the cancer will respond well to chemo.

I have two days in a row off, starting Friday. This is a rarity. I'm giving double-red cells on Friday, and possibly hanging out with some coworkers on Saturday.

This has been a test of the emergency brain rapid ventilation system.

 Adventure Awaits! by Gene M. Rozenberg from Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure! - Original Soundtrack (Rating: 0)

Okay. Don't mind if I do. You've already seen days 1-4, but here's the whole collection.

Because I shared them on Twitter and Facebook, and because I don't want good ol' reliable LJ to feel left out, here's links to photos from the first three days of my trip to Walt Disney World on Flickr. Days four through seven are pending…I've gotta geotag and upload them.

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day-o

after a very difficult initial two months and some odd change in 2012, I'm taking a much needed vacation. I'll be heading to Walt Disney World on Tuesday morning, and staying for 6 nights.

I can't say just how much I need this…it's worth every penny I'm paying. And I'm paying a pretty penny…

For those keeping track at home, this is my first trip to WDW since August 2008, where I was joined on my journey by Tropical Storm Faye, and a stomach bug. I'm hoping this one will be much better.

 The Time of Your Life by Randy Newman from A Bug's Life (Rating: 0)

Lily is gone. We took her to the vet this morning after she was reluctant to eat all day yesterday, and unable to poop. The X-rays showed Lily only had a single kidney, which had stones in it, come calciferous materials in her thorax, and a kidney stone lodged in her ureter. The stone was potentially operable, but in a very risky spot, just under the spine. Lily's sole kidney was four times normal size, possibly because the stone in the ureter was causing urine to back up into it, which was also toxifying it. The kidney was pushing down on her cecum, leading to issues with digestion, and perhaps as a result, her stomach was full of food and material she was having a hard time digesting. Facing a microsurgery that she, at age seven, was unlikely to easily recover from, assuming the vet was able to find, remove and stitch up the ureter, and a significant amount of pain coming from the failing kidney, we chose to let her go.

I've lost both my rabbits this month. I'm absolutely gutted. The house seems so empty.

So, I'm not dealing well with the loss of my rabbit, Kiwi. That's a bit of an understatement. I'm actually on my second double whiskey, alternating between feelings of numbness and uncontrollable sobbing with snot streaming from my nose. Kiwi is wrapped in a purple fleece blanket, in the box we brought him home from the Humane Society in, waiting to go to the vet's office tomorrow for cremation. Oh god, I just lost it again. I'm never going to hold him or pet him or tell him what a good bunny he is ever again. I tried to do all that tonight when he took his turn for the worse, but it's never enough. All I can do is tell myself that I was with him, holding him, praising him, trying to comfort him, and that I held him as he died. I don't know if that meant anything to him. I hope it did. I hope it gave him some comfort that he was with me.

We got Kiwi about a year and a half after I moved back to Wisconsin. I was in a foul mood pretty much all the time, having had the massive amount of unpleasantness and the falling out with my roommates. I was, let's face it, an asshole for pretty much all the time. Mom thought I could use something in my life that would love me unconditionally, and I was missing the late and much beloved katrinathebunny (who I hope was a psychopomp for Kiwi to the Rabbit Hereafter), and so we found Kiwi in the paper at the local Humane Society. He looked a lot like Katrina, and I was smitten.

We initially housed him in the basement, with a space heater at night, but eventually we moved him upstairs. About a year after we adopted him, we noticed him staring at his reflection in a china cabinet door and thought he could use a friend. We adopted Lily shortly thereafter, and the two bonded almost immediately. Kiwi doted on Lily, Lily took it as her due. I'm really worried about how Lily will adjust now.

I've already called work and told them I'm cashing in vacation time for a personal day. I was already useless today when Kiwi was still alive and I was just worried about him not eating.

Monday, January 30th we hit the vet with Kiwi in tow. Kiwi's appetite had been dwindling for the last week or so. He was reluctant to eat anything save for his papaya tablet and soft, fresh foods like his herbs and lettuce. We were shocked to feel his backbone while petting him the other day, so in to the vet he went.

He had some malocclusion going on, which was a shock, as he's always had such good teeth. He also had irregular heart sounds on the right side; the vet said his "lub-dub" is more of a "lub…dub." He said it could be an enlarged heart or just an issue with the electrical impulse in that ventricle. The vet prescribed a low dosage of enalapril twice daily.

Kiwi started Tuesday strong, eating a syringe and a half of Critical Care (think powdered hay and other nutrients added), thought some went down his chin, as well as his heart med, and was pretty darn feisty. He got really sluggish shortly after that, which is a side effect of the heart med.

We got some more Critical Care and the second dose of his heart med into him later this afternoon/early evening, but he'd been refusing all his tasty treats (dill, parsley, blackberries) all day long. He did seem to perk up for the soaked hay, and ate a fair amount of that. But shortly after that, he really deteriorated quickly. His breathing became shallow, he would run halfway across the room and then just sink down, his chin on the floor. We picked him up and held him, trying to get him comfortable, trying to show him how much he was loved and to give him what comfort we could. Every now and then his head would pop up and he'd look around for a moment, but then it would sink down again. Eventually, he seized for a few seconds, and then he just slipped away. I think his little heart just gave out. It was shocking how fast it's all happened, from diagnosis to losing him.

We put his body down for Lily to see, and she sort of crept up and sniffed at him, and then turned away. Obviously not as broken up as we are. My poor boy looks so undignified, with the Critical Care mess still on his chin.

I'm just useless right now. I'm bereft and depressed and self-medicating with medicinal whiskey and I have no one to talk with and I'm just low, man. I'm just so fucking low right now. And every day when I see Lily, that dagger's just going to go through my heart again and I'm going to remember all the wonderful things Kiwi did, and it'll just hurt fresh all over again. And that's the price I pay for taking in a rabbit (or two) from the shelter and giving them a wonderful life. And while I know it's worth every bit of the heartache, it's still hard to see the balance right now. The pain and the loss is still too fresh.

I miss my rabbit terribly, and I've only been without him for 3 hours.

My heart has joined the thousand, for my friend stopped running today.

My rabbit Kiwi passed away at about 12:40 this morning. I was holding him at the end. We think it was his heart that gave out. He was the sweetest little rabbit, and I'm going to miss him terribly.

we have bread. The top's not terribly browned, but it rose beautifully. It's only dancing around that tangy sourdough flavor at the moment, but HOMIGOD does it toast up wonderfully!

Om nom nom nom nom...

 Me and My Shadow by Frank Sinatra & Sammy Davis Jr from (Rating: 0)

We're inaugurating mom's bread machine tonight by making a loaf of sourdough, using the sourdough starter mom got and has been feeding intermittently. In approximately 4 hours, we will have bread. Or we will have a mess. One of the two. Let's find out, shall we?

 The Breakfast Machine by Danny Elfman from The Danny Elfman & Tim Burton 25th Anniversary Music Box (Rating: 0)

For those wondering, for mom I got new slippers as well, DVD of the lodges of America's National Parks with companion book, garnet earrings (her birthstone), a two strand bracelet with garnets and moonstone (my birthstone), new mittens made from felted sweaters (she lost hers), a garlic press (at her request), and the grand poobah present, a Zojirushi Bread Machine that she's been coveting for years.

For my friends at work, I gave the gift of having me as a bartender at their beck and call. I'll even bring the booze if I can (for smaller groups) or else I'll serve as a cocktail consultant and bartender for larger gatherings (they'll probably need to pony up for the bulk of the booze, but I'll do the dirty work and bring secret ingredients).

Oh, and renface got a bunch of Alton Brown goodies. :D

 I'll Be Home For Christmas by Banu Gibson with the New Orleans Hot Jazz from Putumayo Presents New Orleans Christmas (Rating: 0)

Honestly, I don't know. If I knew when I bought a permanent account that Facebook would come along and usurp my brain's ramblings, stealing them from LiveJournal like a dingo in the light, I'd probably have saved my $150. Of course, I don't think I suspected at the time that the Russians would buy LJ, either, so I guess hindsight is 20/20.

One more day of work, Cthulhu help me, and then Xmess. I'll keep you posted with the obligatory haul post. Until then, I hope you all have a fantastic holiday. I'll catch you all soon.

 Mr. Heatmiser by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy from Everything You Want for Christmas (Rating: 5)

this time last year, I was getting the hang of the whole Genius thing. I was midway through my first week of Genius training. I had not yet gone to Smuggler's Cove in SF proper, but a few colleagues and I had headed into Campbell to hit a bar that I forget the name of. It had lots of stained glass. I made everyone try Fernet Branca, because I'm a jerk.

I made some awesome friends out there. Some I'm in contact with more than others, but it really was a fantastic experience. I kinda miss it. Scratch that. I really miss it.

 One Step Out by The Nostalgia 77 Octet from Weapons Of Jazz Destruction (Rating: 0)

Every now and then I consider getting a tattoo. And then I hem and haw and go "well, I really should lose some weight first" and "I need to find a design I like" and "My mother would probably kill me if she found out, regardless of the fact that I'm 31 and capable of making decisions like this on my own."

For a long time I thought about getting some sort of tiki related thing, but I could never really settle on something that I liked that would be reasonably priced (those shaded line drawings have GOTTA be expensive). But now I think I found one that's inside-baseball enough for me to like and to confuse most others, but still not completely obscure. It's the membership badge from the now-defunct Adventurers Club at Walt Disney World's now mostly-defunct Pleasure Island. It looks like this:


I honestly have no idea how much it would cost to get this done, but I'm pretty certain if I ever do get a tattoo done, it'll be of this.

 Waiting on a Friend by The Rolling Stones from Tattoo You (Rating: 5)

Kiwi is doing MUCH better, and is, in fact, pretty much back to normal. He's running around, up to mischief, eating, pooping, sleeping, cuddling and tormenting Lily and is completely on balance. He's off his antibiotics, but still on a low dose of steroids for a couple more days. But he's come a fantastic way in even the first week. This second week has been mostly keeping an eye on him and making sure he's truly on the mend.

Thanks for all the positive thoughts you sent his way, everyone.

Yes, it's technically only 9/10 here, but in the interest of getting this done and over with, as one might pull a bandage off a particularly hirsute portion of one's anatomy, I'm doing it now while the booze has desensitized me.

On 11 September, 2001, I was rooming with He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named-In-A-Public-Forum-Lest-He-Get-All-Pissy in Chicago. I woke up on that Tuesday to go to class (a rarity at that point, as I was already in the throes of not giving a shit about anything, thanks to my parents divorcing) and as I got ready for school, I heard a plane had hit one of the WTC towers in New York. I figured, having read all sorts of "Ripley's Believe it Or Not" books growing up that it was an incident similar to the small single engine plane that hit the Empire State Building way back when.

When I got to the Theatre department at Loyola, we discussed it briefly, and then muddled through Theatre History class, if memory serves. I remember hearing about the second plane hitting and thinking, as so many others did that day, that this was no accident. I went into the stairwell, hopped out the window, and had a smoke with a few of my classmates on the roof of the stepped Skyscraper (now Mundelein) Building. We noted the lack of planes in the sky over Chicago at that point. We learned later that all air traffic had been grounded. We learned later how much things had changed on that morning.

I had rehearsal that night for "The Three Sisters," by Chekhov. I was determined, for reasons I still don't know, to lead the cast in a Mourner's Kaddish in the Green Room. I was certain that we'd be acknowledging what happened during rehearsal, and I wanted to do what little I could to act as psychopomp, I guess, to all those lives snuffed out in an act that we would still take weeks to understand. I'm not Jewish, though I'd been deemed an honorary Jew by several Jewish friends, and thus, it seemed, it fell to me to stumble through the Kaddish in my best spur-of-the-moment Hebrew. I read it in Hebrew, then in English. We all daven-ed, or prayed, or took our moment of reflection, or just sat there, humoring all the others. We were all too young, even in college, to know just how much things had shifted.

And now, a decade later, we can see how things were, how things might have been, and sadly, how things became. We can see how we squandered goodwill, spurned the notion that on that day we were all Americans, and went tilting at politically expedient windmills. What should have united was used to divide and that divisiveness poisoned pretty much every facet of modern American political discourse.

And so that's my remembrance of what happened a decade ago. I wish we'd actually learned from it and changed for the better because of it. But we reacted by retreating into xenophobia and ignorance, because that's what our role model, the President of the United States did, after sitting there staring blankly at a copy of "My Pet Goat," trying to figure out where to go from there.

 Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning by The Wrights from Song Of America (Rating: 0)

I'm really quite unreasonably stoked that Apple's launching a dollar-for-dollar matching program for 501(c)(3) charitable organizations next week.

I used to donate every month to the Red Door Animal Shelter, from which roolet and I adopted katrinathebunny, but then when I got laid off from Vestica, I had to curtail that. I think the time has come to start up a monthly donation again, as they do wonderful things (one of only 5 no-kill shelters in the country to take in rabbits as well as cats and dogs).

Yes, I get excited about charities. Try to tell me I'm not a liberal.

It's been about 3 years, if not more, since I regularly went to my gym. My membership has been sitting idle for that long, though I keep paying it because of the killer introductory rate I'm locked into. First I slowed my attendance when I shifted positions when I was still at Vestica. Then, when I got laid off, I just stopped going entirely. When I was working for Mad Science, I had such an irregular schedule that going was difficult, and that crazy schedule continues with Apple.

Now, however, my gym has gone 24/7, and I have no excuse not to go, damn them. And so I went the other night, after work ended at midnight, because for reasons passing understanding, I was full of energy. No, I don't know where it came from. So I went and did about 30 minutes of cardio/weight loss program on the elliptical trainer, and then went around the weight machines to see just how rusty I was.

The answer is "pretty damn rusty." I'm aching in places that I'd forgotten about. My triceps and anconeus and extensors are screaming for my blood right now (that'd be upper arms and upper forearms, near the elbow). Oh, and my chest hurts when I lift my arms above waist level. The sad thing is I wasn't doing high weight levels on the weight machines; I was doing 3 sets of 10 reps at lower levels. I'm just that out of shape.

The upshot is that I can now drop into the gym whenever I want. It was utterly deserted the other night. I'm probably going to swing in again tonight after dinner digests a bit and trundle along on the elliptical again for a while.

 Raise A Ruckus by Old Crow Medicine Show from Eutaw (Rating: 4)

filched from rhetoricians

1. Comment on this entry and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Create a post (include these instructions!) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people may then comment on your post to have you choose icons of theirs.
4. Profit!

I absolutely adore Kronk. His utterly random love of baking, which is something that entirely too many lackeys, er…lack, is most endearing. Plus, this is sort of him channeling Emeril, so that's funny, too.

I can't sleep! Someone is wrong on the internet! I like to think I'm not quite so rage-filled as I was when I first procured this one, but perhaps I've just redirected it.

This little fella is from the Demented Cartoon Movie. There really are no words…

Sage words from President Bartlett on The West Wing. I use this one when I'm feeling full of myself, which is surprisingly frequently.

Mistah Sparkle! He is disrespectful to dirt! Can't you see that he is serious?!

 Movin' Right Along by Alkaline Trio from Muppets: The Green Album (Rating: 0)