short takes

Embla is two for two with the attic renovations. Today I came home to find that the door to the attic was closed, with her on the other side of the door. And much of the floor freshly painted. I didn't explore for kitty footprints in the paint. (And this is after I told the contractor that the cats like to hide up there...)

Last night's D&D game was fun. It looked like it was going to be a "sideline" story, just a random adventure and excuse to play with some new toys, and it turned out to be part of the overall story. I thought that was nifty. It looked like Ralph meant for it to be a little more threatening than it turned out to be; calibrating adventures has got to be hard.

Someone described to me an easy sauce for salmon: take sour cream and dijon mustard in approximately equal quantities, mix, spread over salmon, bake. (I always bake salmon wrapped up in foil so it doesn't dry out.) We had this tonight and it was tasty.

According to fitday.com, I get more than the RDA of most vitamins (300% of Vitamin A this past month, 240% of Vitamin C, a few other high numbers, and most others in the 100-120% range). There are two exceptions: Vitamin D at 52% and Vitamin K (what the heck is that?) at 33%. They do not, however, provide the next step in useful feedback: what foods would change that.

(While I'm being statistical, over that same month I've averaged (daily) 80g of protein, 57g of fat, 210g carb, 19g fiber, with saturated, poly, and mono fats being pretty much evenly split. I don't know if this is actually good.)

I was a little disappointed by tonight's "West Wing". The topic of parental degeneration (Alzheimer's) is hard to do well in 43 minutes, but I've come to expect the nearly-impossible from this show and this time it didn't quite work. Oh well. (On a related note, we borrowed "Sports Night" tapes recently; I hope to sit down to watch several episodes in the next few days. Right after Shabbat, perhaps.)

I got some much-needed QA resources at work today, and this has done much to increase my confidence in a part of my work for this next release. Yay, QA!

vet recommendations?

I called VCA to schedule the annual checkups and shots and things, and found that, yet again, the vet I've seen for the last couple visits is no longer there. This seems to be routine with them -- vets stay for a year or two and move on.

For several years I had a regular vet with this practice (pre-VCA). Then VCA bought them out and the continuity of care declined. I haven't had bad experiences with VCA; I've just failed to have good ones. I much prefer to build a relationship with a specific service provider, one who will remember (when I forget) that Baldur is sensitive to this drug or that Erik should be monitored for kidney problems or whatever, and it appears that I can't build that kind of relationship with anyone at VCA. Yeah, this stuff gets written down, but checking the records doesn't seem to happen as often as I'd like. I should request my own set of copies.

I'm wondering if I can do better. If you're in Pittsburgh and like your vet, please let me know. Proximity to Squirrel Hill (or house calls -- I can dream, can't I? :-) ) and evening/Sunday hours are important. Price is not, especially; quality of care is much more important. No rush; I made appointments for this year. I'm just scoping out the options for later.