Author: Thom

The sun has finally broken out completely, and the winds aren’t too chilly. After mowing my lawn this morning, I decided to take the piggies out for a little romp out front. Jessie’s on his last legs, so I’m desperate for anything that might give him a boost. While they haven’t been bounding with energy, the little goobers have found a nice patch to cozy up together and munch on some grass and dandelions.

There really isn’t much hope for recovery. His eyes have been slowly closing. He keeps his head down towards the ground. He’s not really eating much of anything anymore. I’m sure we’ll have to make the call soon – I’ve been debating about it most of today – but I just want to give him as much of a fighting chance as possible. At least Shadow’s been trying to be as good of a companion as Jessie was to Teddy at the end. We’re worried about that little bugger, too. He squeaks more and more whenever we take Jessie from the cage.

I already miss him, and he’s sitting right in front of me.

I do! I do!

Seriously, I do. And I might just get my shot. You see, from time to time Lisa and I would catch a couple episodes of the sometimes-irritating-but-still-fun game show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Since I’m pretty good at trivia – my brain is filled with more useless facts than you can imagine – I had fun and often did as well as the best contestants. I even got all but one right during one guy’s run at a million bucks. Lisa – being far more ambitious than I – kept telling me I should audition. Sure. Whatever. That’s likely.

Well, what do you know, Lisa saw information for auditions and signed us both up. This past Monday night, we went into Manhattan and… passed. Wait, before you get all excited, it doesn’t mean a whole lot… yet. You start off taking a 30 question test with about 100 other people. Assuming you pass that (best guess I heard is that you need to get 26 correct), you then go on to be interviewed. In a couple weeks, you get a postcard telling you yes or no. If they like you, you’re put in a pool from which they select contestants. In other words, no matter how well you do in all of this, you aren’t on the show until you’re on the show.

I won’t go into much detail – as I’m sure they like to pretend it’s very secretive – but it was a fun experience. The test was pretty much what you would expect from the show – a lot of questions of varying degrees of ease, largely dependent upon whether or not you happen to know a subject. In case you haven’t seen thee show, what I mean is that the questions aren’t very in depth, so if you’re familiar with the subject you should know it. It’s much easier than Jeopardy, but can still throw lots of curveballs. I was in the 6:30 group, and was among maybe 15-20 that passed the test and moved on for interviews. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but while waiting to be called up I’d say most of these little get togethers with producers lasted about 3 or 4 minutes. I was up there for at least 10 or 15. I’m thinking they liked me. Lisa’s experience was almost exactly the same (she was in the 7:00 group), right down to having one of the longest interviews.

The only thing that bothers me now is that we could have signed up together for their special couples week, and almost would have been assured a spot on the show based on our performance (there are far fewer applicants, and even fewer that have both people pass). Instead, we’re going back in a couple weeks to try out again together – hey, we could use the money. But there’s no guarantee that we’ll do as well the second time around.

Anywho, I am excited about the prospect, but I’m also terrified that my first question will involve something stupidly easy that I often screw up – like trying to tell Renee Zellweger, Joey Lauren Adams, and Jewel apart…

With the the Great Flood apparently nigh here in the Northeast, now seems to be the perfect time to find out just how dry our basement is.

It isn’t.

Alright, it’s not like we’ve got buckets here and are bailing water out for fear of our very lives. But I still had a bit of panic on Saturday. While cleaning up some things before Jeff and Sara swung by to head out to see Pearl Jam (my 10th show – more on that later), I noticed a small puddle in the middle of the semi-finished portion down below. I looked around, and figured it must have been seeping in through a crack – but there wasn’t much water and I figured we could just keep an eye on it.

Unfortunately, when I showed it to Lisa, we found more dampness around the floor below one of the windows. That would be the window that I wisely stacked the many boxes of CDs under. Oh yeah, I am sooooo smart.

You’ve never seen someone tear apart cardboard so quickly. There was that sudden realization that all of my indie CDs – including many expensive, hard-to-find ones – as well as pretty much all of my favorite bands, were on the bottom. And the boxes were looking more and more soaked as I dug through them.

Amazingly, nothing appears to be damaged. It was a whole lot of dampness going on, but no soaking. I still had to setup some places to stack all of the CDs, since keeping them in the wet cardboard could not help at this point. Once that was finished – and I breathed a slight sigh of relief – I finally pulled out the dehumidifier Lisa’s Dad gave us and set it on extra dry. And it had been going full blast ever since. I empty it twice a day, and tonight it still managed to overflow (the automatic shutoff is broken). I have to admit that I’m really amazed at how dry it’s keeping the basement – there isn’t even a hint of dampness around the stacks of CDs.

Unfortunately, this victory does not change the fact that I must clean out the gutters ASAP!

We haven’t received any voicemail in a few weeks. I got kind of lazy about looking for the indicator on the phone, but after awhile I just forgot to check. Today I heard the phone ring while I was… indisposed… and it turned out to be Lisa’s parents. Yet there was no message. Hmm, time to look into this. So I finally log into the Sunrocket account to check – ELEVEN FREAKIN’ MESSAGES!

Somehow the indicator got turned off, and we haven’t known about any of our messages going back to the middle of May. That included two notices from Whole Foods about the herbal extracts I ordered, a few from Lisa’s family, a couple from mine, among others. Ain’t technology grand?

Well, now I’ve set it up to e-mail and IM me when a message comes in – I looked for a smack me upside the head option, but couldn’t find it.

We sent out most of the invitations after this past holiday weekend. There are still more to go out as I didn’t have some friends’ addresses – heck, I’m lucky if I know most of my friends’ last names. Anywho, the first reply already came in today – I guess this thing is really going on.

Okay, let’s get the important stuff out of the way. Jessie is still in pain. He’s lost a lot of weight. But he hasn’t given up – so neither can I. I know that sounds a tad overdramatic, but Teddy deteriorated so quickly there was no alternative to try to save him. He would have needed surgery, IV fluids, etc. Jessie, fortunately, did not have the negative reaction to the antibiotics that Teddy had. While he definitely lost some apetite, he’s slowly been gaining it back – and he’s simply become a (frustratingly) picky eater.

For those interested, and for anyone who might stumble upon this looking for Guinea Pig advice, I’ll let you know what I’ve been doing:

• Since calcium buildup tends to be the most common cause of stones, I’ve almost completely cut carrots out of their diet (little did I know they were a source of calcium). They only get little pieces on occasion as a break from all of the greens.
• I’ve been reading all sorts of sites looking for the best greens for them to be eating in this situation. While many of them are good, the two best seem to be parsley and dandelion greens. At this point in the game, the dandelion greens seem to be the one leaf Jessie will gobble up (Shadow will eat almost anything put in front of him).
• Parsley is one of the best natural cleansers out there, but Jessie stopped eating it about a week ago. So Lisa chopped some up, threw it in the blender, and made some parsley juice. I don’t know how effective it is, but they don’t mind it in their water and I can use it as a base for mixtures.
• More than ever I am making sure they have lots of hay. Jessie is often a little timid around wet foods – I’m sure he associates it with the painful urination – but hay is always welcome, and very healthy for them. MAKE SURE IT’S TIMOTHY HAY – alfalfa should only be used for baby piggies.
• Although I’ve let it fall by the wayside, I also gave him lots of cranberry juice (cut with about 50% water). Some g-ps really love the stuff, but he wouldn’t take it voluntarily. I’ve been using the syringe the vet gave me to force it in his mouth while holding him tight. He doesn’t like this – and neither do I. Nevertheless, cranberry juice is great for the urinary tract, and I’m hoping it can keep it clear while we work on the stone.
• As his squeaking got louder, we searched for information on pain relief. Infants’ Ibuprofen is actually recommended – although the dosing can be tricky. I found a site that said about 0.15mL/kg was good and we’ve worked from there. Fortunately he loves the sweet taste of the children’s version, and that makes it easy to give him some from a syringe.
• The latest mixture I’ve begun using was based on mentions of hydrangea and cornsilk. I mix equal parts of each (about 0.5mL), along with some of the parsley juice. This is a more difficult process, as I have to make sure he takes the majority of it – over 1mL in the morning and again in the evening. It can take up to ten minutes of sitting there, squeezing a little in his mouth, and then kissing his forehead a bunch until he finally drinks it down. While parsley is a great cleanser, the cornsilk and hydrangea can potentially break the stone down enough that he can pass it. This is really our best hope.

All of this combined has been making me late for work and somewhat stressed out – now combine that with having to defend Jessie from Shadow’s advances as he’s been extremely randy the past few days. ACK! The saddest part of this whole situation is that I buy pounds of healthy greens at the store every couple of days, and pretty much none of it is for us. But the people at whole foods must think I’ve goone vegan or something.

I’ll keep everyone posted, and I hope any other guinea pig owners can make use of this advice.

I seriously need to post a bunch today. Even this first one is a couple hours late. But everybody wants to know about the same things – how’s Jessie doing, how’s the wedding plans, how’s the house, oh, and how am I. That last one is of course at the bottom. I’ve got to cover each of these in greater detail, but the basic answers are: not any better but not really any worse either, just fine (with a touch of panic), just sitting there eating my money, and okay with a touch of allergies and body aches.

For now I’ll just brag about having run through another police blockade yesterday. Okay, not really. But remember how I tend to let my inspection go rather overdue? (Last year I was 13 or 14 months past) Yup, I’m a couple months late again thanks to my busted “Check Engine” light. Yesterday morning there was a cop standing in the middle of the road checking stickers. I’ve seen them a couple times the last month or so, but they were usually pretty avoidable. This guy was right around a bend, and I totally forgot to just pull into the deli there and pretend that was my destination.

So I figure I’m busted – not quite. He slows the big truck in front of the guy in front of me and then starts to wave him on. As we approach, he turns to stop a car coming from the other directions. By that time, the guy in front of me was driving by – I seized the opportunity and practically humped his bumper in order to slide through before the cop could turn around completely. Whaddya know, it worked! He looked down the street at me as I drove away, but I’m not sure if it’s because he half-noticed the sticker or if he was just annoyed at how I drove through without paying him any attention (or maybe he was noting my license plate number… crap). Regardless, he just let me go, and went about his business.

This morning I took the long way to work. 😛

UPDATE: Yesterday afternoon the cops setup a check point almost right outside Unigene’s parking lot. Fortunately Lisa swung by for lunch so we took her car. YOU’LL NEVER CATCH ME COPPERS!

Yes, it is the oft-done tale of a small-time nobody making it in the big leagues, but that doesn’t change the fact that Invincible uses my beloved Eagles and the city of Philly as the backdrop. Which means that I will actually be rushing to the theaters to watch a guy-cry flic. Check out the trailer.

Most of these types of movies are “based on a true story,” but with this one I’ve actually talked to people that remember Vince Papale playing and how popular he was (I still need to talk to my Dad about him). It may be hokey, but it’s my kind of hokey.

I’m sure most of you have already seen this one – even one of my sisters sent me this link. But it took me until today to finally watch the entire thing. Brilliant! And mad bonus points for including “Jump On It”/”Apache”. Plus, I really wanted to try out embedding a YouTube video.

Sometimes you just come across a song that is so perfectly composed, so exquisitely catchy, so… just… everything, that you can play it 20 times in a row and still want more. Recent examples for me would be The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights,” Bloc Party’s “Banquet,” Feist’s “Mushaboom,” The Black Keys’s “10 A.M. Automatic,” and Pearl Jam’s “World Wide Suicide.” If you are missing any of those songs, I cannot stress how much better your life would be if you got ahold of them.

Over the past couple weeks, another one has caught on with me – Maximo Park’s “Now I’m All Over the Shop.” This is one of those off kilter, breakup songs that leave just enough open that 75% of people going through a breakup will say it’s totally about them. But it makes you feel good.

So, get a copy and sing along:
Continue reading “Now I’m All Over The Shop”