Sick kitty

Charlie was acting funny when we got home from work last night. He didn't meet me at the door and wasn't begging for his dinner. He was just laying on the guest bed sleeping. At the time I thought perhaps he was just extra tired. Well by the time bed time rolled around he still hadn't moved so I picked him up and put him in front of his food dish. Still didn't want to eat. He seem kind of out of it as well. He didn't sleep with us last night and this morning I found him curled up in our closet. He wouldn't come out for breakfast and hadn't eaten all night. This is when I became very concerned. I call the vet as soon as they were open and was able to get him and appointment for 9:15am.

At 9am I got his carrier and loaded him in the car. He peed in his carrier while we were in the car. I didn't notice this until we got to the vet. His whole back end was wet! The vet saved some the urine for a sample and clean out my kennel. He was running a fever and had blood in his urine. Oh and he had some feas again. Sean and I had forgotten to give him his frontline and gave it too him last night. The vet thinks it is probably just a parasite from the feas or possibly a kidney infection. So hopefully it is one of those and not something worse. They took some blood and gave me antibotics.

When I got home from work he seemed about the same. However he seems to have perked up a little since then. I don't think he has eaten anything yet, but hopefully he will over night. He just seems a little more comfrontable then earlier. He is sleeping under my papason chair right now. He even purred for me a little.

I was really worried about him all day and when I got home from work. I hope that the worst is behind us now! All keep you all posted.

Toby is the only healthy animal in the house right now. Quincy had/has an ear infection. He gets to go to the vet tomorrow to have it rechecked. So keep your fingers crossed that Toby is not next!

Best superbowl ever!!!!

I have watched a number of super bowls over the years but almost always for the commercials. How ever this year's game was actually pretty intense and exciting. I was of course pulling for the Giant's given our family hatred of the Patriots. I also wanted to see Eli have a good game since he is always in the shadow of his brother. Also who else was highly amusing by the clips they keep showing of Peyton. It was just entertaining to watch his reactions. Plus seriously does the man have any friends! Oh and way to leave that women hanging at the end when they won. She was totally looking for a victory hug!

Oh and what was with the announcer's hair. Serious colic going on in the back the every time they showed him on TV. Honestly you think someone would have motioned to let him know. It was distracting!

Oh what was everyone's favorite ad? I personally liked the e-trader baby with the clown, the hank Budweiser, and planters uni-brow. There were quite a few good ones. You can watch them all here. Oh and who wants to see the new pixier Disney Wall-E movie!!!! See a trailer here.

The answers...Finally

I know you, my loyal reader were waiting in rapture for the answers to the "name the vegetable" quiz. Well the wait is finally over. Drum roll please.....

1. Arkansas traveler - Tomato
2. Small shining light - Watermelon
3. Ram's Horn- String Bean
4. Cosmic Purple - Carrot

Oh and the winner is Jenn, with the highest score of 1!!!! Your prize will arrive in 6-8 weeks..........perhaps longer.....knowing how mailing goes in our family!

The joys of home ownership....

Last night our furnance stopped working. It simply wouldn't come on. Of course we had to realize this at 9pm. It ws 65 in the house and the thermostat was set to 70. We tried turning it up, nothing happened. We tried turning it to EM Heat nothing happened. We check the circuit breaker in the garage. Nothing was tripped. So we put an extra blanket on the bed and went to sleep. We woke up at 6am and still no heat. The house was down to 57 degrees. Sean went to PT and I called the company that installed and maintained the system for the owner before the last one. I was surprised to actually get someone but since it wasn't an emergency and I didn't want to pay the extra for them to come during off hours I agreed that they could call after 8am. Now of course I had to be at the Vet at 8am so I gave them my cell phone number too. Quincy has an ear infection and the vet was sympathetic when I explained that my heat wasn't working and they might call while I was in with him. Of course they did call in the middle of the appointment. How embrassing but everyone was understanding. So after I returned home the house was at 55 degrees. Darn cold!!! My coworker suggested that I reset all the breakers associated with the heat. I went out to garage and did all the ones marked furnance, heat pump, and heater. Nothing happend. I then went back in the house and open up the closet with the furnance. I noticed that there were two breakers on the bottom. I reset the first one nothing, however when I reset the second one the air magically came back on!!! Yah!!!! However Sean and I decided to keep our appointment to have everything checked out anyways since we don't know why the breaker got tripped in the first place. The heat went on back on at 9:30 when it was 55 degrees. It is now 11:30am and it is only up to 59! I'm hoping that the last 10 degrees back up to 70 will go quickier since it is warming up outside. It was around 16 degrees this morning. The sun has come out and it is suppose to get into the 30s today. We have a heat pump and they don't work very well in super cold weather. We have a auxillary heater to supplement when it is very cold.

Well hopefully the repair person will come soon and nothing major will be wrong. Sean is coming home soon to relieve me so I can go into work. At least it is finally starting to feel a little less frigid in the house!!! I wish that I had fur like the animals. They didn't seem to be in the least bit bothered by the cold.

finally they started coming....

What am I talking about? My seed catalogs!!! I requested at least 5 or 6 and had until this week only received 2. First I got the Burpee catalog. Plenty of pretty picture but they mainly carry hybrid and non open pollinated varieties. While I haven't completely made up my mind about hybrids I'm not sure I like the idea of messing with plant genetics. I sort of feel like we should let evolution run it course to make heartier, healthier, and better varieties.

Second catalog I received was seed savers. Seriously an awesome catalog with tons of information and pictures. Each variety has a short informative description about origin and characteristics. Never I have a seen some many types of tomatoes or melon or other veggies. So cool. I highly recommend requesting this one or at least browsing it online.

This week I have gotten 3 more catalogs. First Totally tomatoes, second seymour's selected seeds, and last baker creek heirloom seeds. Totally Tomatoes is basically all tomatoes and pepper. So awesome for a tomato lover like me....except eventually I will have to chose a few varieties. Seymour's is a flower seed catalog with beautiful flowers. Baker Creek is a smaller seed company out of Missouri that is family owned. They have an extremely thick catalog with tons of different types of heirloom plants.

Also I should note that seed catalogs can be quite amusing. The types often have crazy names like: mammoth melting sugar (sweet pea), sweet chocolate (brown sweet pepper), green zebra (tomato), mortgage lifter (tomato), and many many more.

For fun here are a few guess what type of veggie they are:

1. Arkansas traveler
2. Small shining light
3. Ram's Horn (Just for you Chris!)
4. Cosmic Purple

No cheating by looking them up on the internet. Oh and a hint is they are all common summer produce. Nothing weird like parsnips or rutabaga. Have fun!

Garden: Initial thoughts and rambling

I'm determined to have a vegetable garden this year. Last year started out with herbs and tomatoes in pots. They did pretty well while in my care. I gave them to Shari and a neighbor when we moved. I inherited a wild mess of tomatoes once we arrived. I can't remember if I posted on them before but it was a vining crazy super producing mess. Needless to say I really didn't do anything to keep them alive they just grew.

So with both of those facts combined I think there is hope that I might be somewhat successful. Also I think some of Sean's research maddess has rubbed off. I have requested at least 5 different seed catalogs from various source, bought one book, and checked out two from the library. I would have checkout more but there is a 2 book limit when you get your card and then they mail it too you. (side note: I think that is the strangest library policy I have come across yet. The only thing I can figure is that they had trouble with people putting down wrong addresses and loosing books.) I plan on checking out more book once I received my card in the mail. (hopefully it will come tomorrow)

I have received two seed catalogs so far. One from Burpee and one from Seed Savers. The Burpee one had plenty of pretty pictures but not as much information as I was looking for and also I'm not sure I want to grow any hybrid plants and non open pollinated plants. The Seed savers catalog is awesome. Tons of helpful information about favor and quality, plus all of their seeds are heirloom varieties. I also like the idea of supporting their cause of saving seeds to make sure certain varieties don't die out.

Anyways I think I have rambled enough for today! Any one else have any garden plans or resources they want to share?

Sunrise alarm clock: take 3

I didn't use my alarm clock over the weekend so I could sleep in and wake up naturally. Luckily we had sun shine over the weekend even though it was freezing outside (12 was the high on sunday.) So last night I switch it to do the sunrise over 15 minutes instead of 30. Well the puppies didn't wake me up and I made it until the soft beeping but I felt groggier than I did on the 30 minutes. In fact I ended up staying in bed an extra 5 minutes with the light on until Quincy and Toby got persistent. So I wish there was a setting between 15 and 30 minutes. I'm going to give 15 minutes another try tomorrow. I will still say that even with being less awake on the 15 cycle it was still a more pleasant way to wake up than loud beeping.

The alarm clock also has another nice feature which I have been experimenting with, it is sunset. The idea is the same only the light gets dimmer instead of brighter. The time can be set to either 15,30,45, or 60 minutes depending on what you want. I haven't sat and read as it gets darker which I'm going to try tonight. I have just been turning it to sunset as I'm getting ready for bed...and I haven't really gotten the full effect since other lights have been on.

Overall I'm still happy with the clock. I'll keep you posted on next couple of days.