Day: September 16, 2003

For those interested, former NATO Commander Wesley Clark jumped into the fray that is the Democratic process. That’s right, after a couple of Internet petitions to that effect, Clark decided he will run for President. People seem to think he’s a real threat to Bush, so lets all wish him the best!

Just have to announce the birth of my 4th nephew (I also have 1 neice). He’s my sister Suzanne and her husband Alex’s second boy. Caleb approves, so they will be taking him home today (I think). There’s no name right now (they’re leaning towards Luke), so right now we’ll just call him ‘it’. It’s doing well, and I hope to see it soon.

So I’ve been taking care of a friend’s Guinea Pigs for the past few days. They are so absolutely adorable it hurts. Last night they were very noisy, so I put them both in my lap and I swear they were ready to curl up and go to sleep right there. But now I’ve been doing all sorts of reading on the Internet about how to take care of them. Much to my dismay, it turns out that the fancy cedar chip bedding I bought for them may be doing more harm than good! I’m now using a combination of some of that bedding along with lots of shredded newspaper. When it comes down to it, they’re very dirty animals so you have to put effort into keeping them clean. But they are sooooo lovable. Anywho, here are some useful links that I found:

• Animal Hospital of High Park – also with pages on other small animal care
• Cottontail’s Cabbage Patch – has a lot of info about various small mammals. The Guinea Pig page helped me understand all the noises they make.
• BeanMakers – based on their latin name, this site even has WAV files of their little squeaks. A very good list of other sites, also.
• A question and answer site that has articles on animals – it even had a page dedicated to just discussing their squeaks.

Teddy and Jessie are just wonderful, and even if I have to give them back, I may just get my own.