Howie's Vet Visit

 It did rain again last night.  Every drop helps.  The outside temp is in the upper 40s (F) and is only expected to climb a few degrees higher.  According to the forecast, at least some amount of rain should be falling over the next three days.  I hope they're right.

Yesterday was... sort of fun, sort of meh, sort of maybe I should just take a nap.  This is how most Tuesday's are turning out after I work the weekend and Monday.  It's not that I'm tired, it's just that everything seems to be a chore.  Adding to that is the fact that I didn't sleep that well Monday night.  My Garmin watch, which tracks my sleep indicated that I had slept poorly, and that my body battery hadn't replenished nearly enough, and that it was going to be a ho-hum kind of day.

I got my water bill yesterday.  That little leak I had in the bathroom wasted around 700 gallons.  That will give you an idea as to how bad it was.

Howie did have his first Vet visit yesterday and it went well.  He has a slight entropy on his right eye, that means the eyelashes on his bottom eye are sort of turning in and scratching his eye.  It's not serious.  In fact, his new vet said that it's quite probably the issue will fix itself as he gets older and his head grows   Stat wise, he weighs 30 pounds, or 13.5 kg.  His final weight will be around 80 pounds, or 36 kg.  She recommended that he go from puppy chow to large adult dog food, so a bag has been ordered from Chewy.  Here's a blurry pic from the Vet.

And if you haven't been paying attention, Social Conservatives are furious over Trump's choice to have Kennedy run the Department of Health.  He's pro abortion.  I suppose he feels that he's not going to need anymore Evangelical votes.  And Dr. Oz to handle Medicare and Medicaid?  Seniors prepare to pay more for your health care.  And for those who don't understand, those tax dollars which should be going to benefit Americans, will be used to offset another big tax break for billionaires.

There are joyous things happening if you look for him.  Yesterday the Orange Anus and Elonia were down in Texas to watch one of Elonia's rockets launch and... it exploded.  This is what's called symbolism, or, possibly foreshadowing.  Maybe it's a combination of both.  

Elonia slashed the workforce at Zitter, the dying social media platform, because he needed those dollars to help pay off that $40 billion dollar loan he took out to buy it.  Stupidly, he's going to try and do the same thing with the American economy.  He and Orangie have about the same IQ, a little below average, and that shared stupidity will come back to haunt them.

Santa's on his way

Good Morning!  Biggie's at the Vet.  I was telling everybody his appointment was for Wednesday - well, I was wrong.  This is why I put everything in my calendar.  Sometimes things stick in our minds of which we are so very certain and turn out to be incorrect.  Why did Wednesday stick in my head?  Was I thinking of the Netflix series (which is pretty good), or was the first date the Vet suggested Wednesday, tomorrow?  I'm thinking that's probably the case.  Of course, there I go thinking again.

Work was very slow yesterday.  We're down in measures and sales.  Seriously, when I look at sales for the district, the numbers are almost spot on with our sales pre-pandemic.  That's a reality many corporations don't want to deal with.

The garbage men took my old garbage can.  I had just gotten home from dropping Biggie off, when they drove my my house.  No problem.  It was very old.  The bottom had large holes in it.  One of the wheels had fallen off so it no longer rolled.  I got my money's worth out of that purchase, since it survived over 14 years.

There's big storm a brewing!  It's supposed to begin on Thursday in the Midwest and move east.  This little map looks bad.  According to this I should hit the liquor store prior to getting screwed.  Accuweather says we're going to be getting mixed precipitation on Thursday, snow to rain on Friday, and then the temperature is predicted to crash on Christmas eve, with the high only reaching up into the mid 20s (F).  I think I'll play it safe and pick up a bottle of wine. 

For those who don't Tweet:  Elon lost his poll and decided to change the rules.  If you want to vote in one of his Twitter polls now, you need to purchase and $8 monthly subscription.  Some will pay, I will not.  I'm on Post, signing up for Mastodon, and already on Tribal.  Of the 3, I suspect Post will become the most popular, except for MAGA bots.

And, of course the celebrating has just begun.  As everyone knows by now, the January 6 committee has recommended the DOJ indict the Orange Anus on 4 different charges.  The BBC has a nice take on the matter, but then so does everyone else.  It will be interesting to see how the effect the Republican party, especially in the House of Representatives where the American Freedom Caucus worships the shit beneath his feet.  Social Conservatives who believed they were going to declare holy war on America are now embattled in war with each other.  And as for the Evangelicals, their holy grail has sprung a leak.  What will the DOJ do?  Indictments will follow more rapid than eagles, and as leaves that before the wild hurricane fly when they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky. Santa's on his way.

 

Weight and Truth

 Friday has arrived.  This is the last of 6 consecutive days off.  Tomorrow, I go back to work for 3 days.  Over the next couple of weeks, I'm being scheduled 3 days on, and 4 days off.  That's fine with me.  Business is slow, or at least it has been.  Prior to the pandemic, this time of year we would have been busy.  Warm weather translated to higher sales.  Trendy people thought about 'curb appeal,' mostly because HGTV told them this was important.  I've never fallen into that trap.  I don't need my house to look stunningly perfect.  

My trip to the VA went fine.  My bloodwork is in good shape.  I had a substitute doctor; my regular guy was at a funeral.  So instead of chit-chatting, I was shown graphs and told 'this is very good,' several times.  Normally, they give me a print-off.  That didn't happen, so I'll print them off later this morning.

Biggie's bloodwork, like mine, was fine.  They've approved his Carprofen for another 6 months.  His Vet wants him to have bloodwork again in November.  Oh, and they want him to 'fast' before it's drawn.  That will be difficult.

Oh, and I went to the movies last night to see The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Like so many other people, I am not a big Nick Cage fan, so there was trepidation.  Let's be honest, Cage's filmography is filled with titles that continually make you wonder just what the hell was he thinking.  That same thinking also applies to his personal life, but that's a different subject. 

Anyway, the idea of a self-obsessed actor playing a fictional (?) version of himself is... intriguing.  Most of us can only take so much of Nick Cage.  To be perfectly honest, the film succeeds not because of Cage, but because of Pablo Pascal, his co-star.  Javi's entrance flips the movie onto its head, and rather than a film about a fictional Nick Cage and his ego, it spins into a new direction.  Suddenly, it becomes a film about 2 cinephiles writing a movie about their friendship.  The chemistry between Cage and Pascal is very good, their comedic timing is almost impeccable as they play off each other.  They are very, very funny.

Finally, I don't know about you, but I think another really funny thing going on right now is the feud between Marjorie (I hate Catholics) Taylor something or other, and Bill Donohue (sp) is pretty damn hysterical.  He's a self-righteous loser who is in charge of the ultra-conservative Catholic League (sp), and he's pissed because she said Catholics were being run by Satan.  Of course, Billy boy is terribly upset.  He believed Evangelicals saw Catholics as equals.  Wrong.  While Evangelicals will encourage Catholics to vote Republican, they want nothing to do with them.  Your average protestant sees the catholic as a heretic.  Your average evangelical sees them as being damned to Hell.  This is a truth Billy boy will never understand.

Elizabethan collars? meh

Big Seig had his big surgery yesterday... well, it wasn't that big, just a couple of snips to cut away his masculinity.  It was something that needed to be done because of Lilly.  Even though she is spayed, I didn't want to have him trying to hump her every times his little hormones kicked in, if you know what I mean.  The Vet wanted to put him in an Elizabethan collar.  "He might try and lick his wounds," she'd said.  I said "nope."  "But saliva is a digestive juice," she countered, "and it will slow down the healing process.  "Nope," I said again.  And it's not because I always feel bad when ever I see a dog in one of those collars, which I always do.  Don't you?

Bad collar

The real reason is Lilly, and not that she'd feel jealous.  She's 22 months old, and she and Big Seig love to play.  One of the things they do while playing is grab each other's collar in their mouths and pull.  I knew if I walked him through the front door an Elizabethan Collar the first thing that would cross her mind, several times, would be "toy, toy, toy, toy."  So I nixed the collar.  This was a very good thing,  The minute they saw each other it was bouncy, bouncy, play joy until he realized he was still medicated and need to take a nap.  Believe me, that collar would have been shredded in seconds flat.

First Vet visitc

Off today, but back to work tomorrow, and a busy day it has been.  To the store first thing this morning, and then off to Good Hope Animal Hospital - Sig's first visit.  First of all, I have to say I like the Vet, her name is Sara and she's very personable.  He got dewormed for a 2nd time, and a vaccination.  He goes back in 4 weeks for his first rabies shot - there are 2 of them.  Probably around the same time as he's getting his rabies booster, his little nuts will go.  That's right, he's being neutered.  The AKC doesn't like this, it reduces the breeding stock, but I've never planned on using him for stud service.  Oh, and at 11 weeks of age he weighs in at 22.1 pounds.  He's gonna be a big one.

In other news, our inventory was on Tuesday.  It's been a long 3 weeks of prep.  As a whole, the store didn't do too well.  My paint department, however, kicked ass!  My shrink was .0551 on inventory sales of 3.4 million, I was budgeted for .086.  My inventory sales would have been higher, but they moved the date up from last year.  So yesterday, while everybody was walking around wearing a 'woe-is-me grimace,' I was perky and bouncy, but not overly so, at least not on the outside.

Close shave

I'm off today.  That means my daily routine is more relaxed.  There is no set time for me to get up, and when I do, things get done at my own speed.  Sometimes I shave on days off and sometimes I don't.  This morning I decided to shave.  I keep my razor and shaving cream on a small table in a walk-in closet off of the bathroom.  So, I pulled them out and set them on the sink and went on to enjoy a long, hot shower.  Stepping out of the shower, I lathered my face with shaving cream only to discover the razor seemed to have gone missing.  Shit.  Wrapping the towel around me, I began looking for it, first of all verifying that I did, indeed, take it from the table in the closet.  Then I padded down the hall.  Checking the computer room / gym and still finding nothing, I proceeded to the bedroom. There, on the bed, I found the razor... well, not the whole razor, just the handle.  Shit.

The razor

As you can see, it's been chewed up...  And of course I knew exactly who to blame, Lilly, the little Boxer.  So I started the search for the blades.  As I looked, I knew there was a distinct possibility I might be calling the Vet.  And I began to wonder what the cost of x-rays would be, and if they did prove she'd swallowed the blades, what the cost of the surgery would be, and, while I have no problem with the expense, this is not the way I prefer to have points put on my Amazon credit card.  While I could write a check, I hate taking that much money out of the bank, so I decided earning the points would be better.  As you can tell by my thinking process, and while I do say "shit" a lot, I am not one who panics, at all. This is why, when anything serious does happen, I am the one everybody calls.

The culprit

So I wiped the shaving cream from my face, got dressed, and went down stairs.  There, on the living room carpet, were the razor blades, chewed but still intact in their plastic sheathing.  I checked Lilly's mouth and it was fine, no nicks or cuts.  The end result?  My razor is now in the trash and I'm back to using my Braun shaver.  Dogs.  Do you think Lilly realizes how close a shave she had?  Not at all.

 

The Bozo on CNBC

That's what I heard last PM on CNBC.  Some unremarkable man said the number of pet owners in the United States was down 20%.  I stunned! My first thought went sort of like this "it's the economy, stupid."  I know Vet costs can be expensive, I take my full sized Boxer for a yearly check-up and, if I let them give her all of the shots they want to, my bill runs about $190.  Of course my Vet likes to practice elective vaccination, they want you to chose to vaccinate for every thing they say.  I say no to things like the one they feel she should have just in case she gets exposed Kennel Cough.  I don't plan to ever put her in a kennel.

Gertie resting on a Home Depot drop cloth, at 9.99 cheap and washable

Anyway, I started checking to see if this unremarkable man was in the least be correct.  To my surprise he was remarkably wrong.  I don't know why this Bozo thought he could pull numbers out of his ass like that, doesn't he know people 'fact check?'  The number of pet owners in the United States is growing, and when queried about whether the economy effected their decision to get a dog or cat, their answer was 'no."  Thanks to my bit of timely investigation I also know that dog owners outnumber cat owners by about 10 million and that about 28% of dog owners have two.  I own a Boxer and a 19 year old cat named Max.  I did not see a statistic on the number of Americans who own one of each.  What else did I find out?  The average Vet cost per year for a dog as $212 so I'm getting away kind of cheap.  A side note on my dog and cat:  I told the Boxer that when the 19 year old cat dies we'll get another puppy.  As a result, a day doesn't pass without her whispering to the cat "die, cat, die."