[Ah, good. My home network connection is happier than it was last night when I tried to post this...]

( daily tasks, cooking, romance, nosy questions, cats )

The story about the elephant is the funniest thing I've read in days.

I have a new front-runner in the "deceptive marketing" category. Today I examined a bag of Glenny's Soy Crisps, which proudly proclaims "10 grams pure soy protein" and "only 65 calories per serving". However, it is not 10 grams of protein per serving. (The bag contains two servings, so it's 5g protein per 65 calories.)

Yesterday I came into the office to find a keyboard tray peeking out from beneath my desk. I wondered how long it had been there without my noticing; it was possible to push it back well out of sight, so it could have been there for a long time. The mystery was solved when someone walked into my office later and found me, not my office-mate, sitting at my desk. Apparently he'd installed it the previous night, but in the wrong place. I suppose that beats the alternative outcomes. :-) (No, I don't want a keyboard tray; my arms aren't long enough to use one with proper posture.)

Tonight was an On the Mark practice. Jenn has decided to leave the group due to an attack of life. It's unfortunate, but I understand. I don't want anyone to burn out. Ray is staying, so we'll juggle some parts around and things will be ok.

Tonight's episode of Enterprise, "Cogenitor", had a dreadful preview. It was also one of the best episodes of the show to date. That was an extremely pleasant surprise. (Ok, I saw every key plot point well ahead of schedule, but that didn't hurt the show, as it turned out. Now we just have to wait and see if they actually follow through on this in future episodes.)

Embla lay down in my lap while I was watching the show tonight. She's never done that before. Yay! It took five and a half years, but she's finally comfortable enough to actually settle down in my lap, rather than just walking across it and then scampering away. Progress. :-)

Baldur: 18.0 lb (a slight drop from last year)
Embla: 10.1 lb
Erik: 8.125 lb (lost a pound)

I think this is the first time in his life that Baldur has lost weight from one checkup to the next. This is cause for celebration, though the drop was only about three-quarters of a pound. I'll take what I can get. The vet was unwilling to estimate what his weight should be, however.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time Erik has lost weight; last year he lost most of a pound from the previous year, and this year he lost a pound from last year. He's not a large cat to begin with. I had actually thought he was gaining a little weight this past year, but I was wrong. (I actually asked that they weigh a 10-pound bag of food, to make sure the scale wasn't off. It wasn't.)

The vet took a blood sample from Erik and they're going to run the standard suite of tests. I should hear back in several days (maybe by the end of the week). His only other blood test was two years ago, when he showed elevated levels of calcium -- enough to call for a dietary change, but not enough to worry about cancer, they said at the time. (Tonight's vet concurred with that.) So we'll see what the level is this time. The physical exam was just fine -- nothing suspicious there, the vet said. (Apparently the other thing that sometimes causes high calcium is a thyroid problem, but she said his thyroid felt normal.)

He's only ten years old; he's not supposed to be wasting away yet. I hope the test results suggest a useful course of action.

The vet was a little puzzled by the choice of special diet; it's something for renal failure, rather than a low-calcium food. She's not the one who prescribed it, and when I asked her if she recommended changing it she thought about it for a minute and said no. One effect of high calcium would be kidney problems, and even if he's not showing those problems now, the food could help hold them off. And she didn't have any better suggestions for what to feed him.

Once again I have had an ambiguous experience with VCA. I was prepared to ask for a copy of our medical records on the way out, so I could take them to a different vet in the future. I might still do that before next year. This particular vet was very good -- it was the most thorough exam I can remember them having, and she seemed perfectly willing to take all the time we needed to do everything right. She handled them gently but firmly, and she showed genuine concern. She carefully read each cat's medical history before doing the exam and asked me relevant questions. That's the first time that's happened. And, like my own doctor, she didn't talk down to me but assumed I had a brain. (This was probably aided by some of the questions I asked her.)

However, she's been there for four weeks; VCA will probably beat it all out of her in time. And judging by past experience, she'll probably be there next year and not the year after. My big complaint against VCA is the revolving-door vets; I want a regular vet. They have some good people, but they don't keep them for long.

Maybe the thing to do is for me to tell her that, rather than talking to VCA. If she's going to leave VCA for some other place in the city, for example, I'd have no problems with following her. (She might have a contractual problem with that, but I don't know if I don't ask.)

Last night tangerinpenguin, Steve, and Pam came over for dinner and gaming. We ended up playing Iron Dragon (after rolling a die due to indecision). Pam had not played before, but she picked it up quickly and did well. It was a fun game, and while I wasn't close to winning when Steve hit 250 points, I didn't feel like I had played a bad game.

Embla surprised me: she actually came into the dining room and accepted attention from Pam. Pam had never been to our house before and hadn't met Embla previously (I'm not sure if she's met the other two); Embla is generally very "shy" (read: reclusive) when dealing with anyone new (or a crowd of any significant size). She's been getting better, and this was another milestone. (I've had Embla for five years, and she was a two-year-old stray of uncertain background then. So she's lived most of her life with me and knows I'll take care of her, but she's still very skittish.)

Today we had lunch with ralphmelton and lorimelton. We geeked about D&D. :-)

Tonight Dani and I are going to see the Reduced Shakespeare Company in a show called "The Reducers". They're covering a large number of classic works of literature in a small amount of time. (I think the run time is a bit under 2 hours, including an intermission.) The reviews I've seen have been positive, so this should be fun. We ended up with free tickets, and they even look to be good seats! (I was trying to score free tickets for "Man of La Mancha" but missed and ended up with these instead. Which is fine.)

We saw their "Complete Works of Shakespeare in 43 Minutes", or whatever it's called, a few years ago, and that was a lot of fun except for one part that was in highly-questionable taste. But it's probably pretty hard to do a tasteful parody of Titus Andronicus, so I suppose that can be forgiven.

It looks like we're going to see LOTR on Erev Xmas.