Erik still needs to gain weight, so he'd been eating mostly canned food. A friend suggested (and the vet concurred) that feeding him baby food might help (more protein), so I bought a few jars of that to try out the idea. He loves that! (Or, to be more precise, so far he loves chicken puree.) Because baby food is intended for people, it has nutrition information -- which tells me that a small jar is 70 calories and 6g of protein. (A baby's RDA of protein seems to be 14-15g.) This makes me wonder what ordinary feline nutrition needs are. Cat food, not being intended for humans, doesn't come with the FDA-required data dump.

I've been listening to a CD by Neshama Carlebach that I picked up recently ("Journey", IIRC). I was surprised to notice that she uses the Sephardi pronunciation of Hebrew -- surprised because her father, who was also a famous singer and songwriter (in addition to being a rabbi) used the Ashkenazi pronunciation. I guess I just assumed she'd follow her father in this, though I'm glad she didn't 'cause Sephardi is what I'm used to and it makes it easier for me to understand what I'm listening to.

I never thought it would be so much hassle to evict a mailing list. I'm currently hosting a list at my shell provider. There is a Yahoo mirror of the list, but for historic reasons that's not the "main" list. Well, I want to stop hosting it, so that's going to change now. This should be a simple matter of moving subscribers, flipping a switch at Yahoo (so direct posting is allowed), and shutting down the current (non-Yahoo) list. In practice, though, moving subscriptions requires the subscribers' active participation (which isn't happening), and only the owner of the Yahoo list can flip that switch (I'm a moderator; the owner is bouncing email), and I'm starting to wonder if moving the list requires sacrificing a goat under a full moon at midnight or some such. (Which would be a problem, as that's pretty likely to be avodah zarah, or alien worship. And squicky. :-) )

Dani's company's holiday party was this afternoon. They held it at the children's museum, which seemed an unusual venue for small gatherings (I don't think of museums as having party rooms), but on the way in we passed a sign directing people to a birthday party. Ok, that makes sense -- a child's birthday party at a children's museum makes sense, and they won't turn down adults. :-) (There are about a dozen people at the company, and we and one other couple are the only ones without children.) To clarify: it's a museum filled with stuff interesting to children, not a museum displaying children. I suppose the latter would be, properly speaking, the "child(ren) museum". :-)

Yesterday morning, alas, instead of enjoying Shabbat services, I was at the vet clinic with Erik. (Why yes, I do think health of a pet trumps Shabbat. For myself, for anything short of Major Injury or Impending Death, I'd wait.) Fortunately, the problem was only a pulled dressing and not, as I had feared, pulled stitches. They fixed him up with a bigger dressing with more adhesive, which seems to be holding up well so far. But not the most calming way to spend (part of) Shabbat.

Yesterday afternoon and evening we played another game of 7 Ages. This time we ran from the first age through the beginning of the fourth, but it took a long time. At 9:00, in the middle of the third age, it seemed reasonable to set that boundary. At midnight it was less obvious that it was correct. So, still some calibration to do, but it's a fun game (though I got thoroughly whumped this time).

Short takes:

Ah, that's why there were a bazillion messages waiting in the moderation queue for an SCA mailing list today. Someone posted a query about sewing machines. That's kind of like posting a query about editing tools to a software-developers' list. :-)

Interesting if true, but entertaining either way: legal complications of a bizarre death (link from Dani).

My sister has never read the Narnia books and would like a copy. Does anyone know if the ones currently in print have been altered (from the ones we read in childhood) other than to change the order? (I can solve the ordering problem if I buy individual volumes or a boxed set rather than one of the compedia that's out there.)

Our congregation is currently looking for an associate rabbi, and I managed to get myself onto the search committee. I'm glad to be able to play this role, and I'm glad to have the opportunity to see this process up close. We conducted our first phone interview this morning; in some ways it's not that different from interviewing programmers. Sure, the domain is rather different, but either way, you want to try to figure out how the candidate goes about solving problems, how he works with others, and so on.

The user interface on my cell phone is worse than it first appears. Someone left me voice mail, which I listened to but didn't immediately act on. I figured I could always go back to the "recent messages" menu item to re-hear it. Nope -- no way to do that through that interface. The secret for getting to the voice-mail box is that it's on speead-dial #1 -- which is in the manual, but I shouldn't have to consult the manual for something like that. Putting it on speed-dial is fine, but it should also be linked from the menu that is otherwise about messages. Sheesh.

Dani brought home a book of poetry called Now We Are Sick. That, and that it is edited by Neil Gaiman (and Stephen Jones, who I otherwise don't know) should tell you something about the amount of twistedness in the content.

My copy of "Clam Chowder: Kosher" (new DVD) arrived yesterday. This is a collection of songs from several years' worth of concerts that they actually have publication rights for (mostly traditional, out-of-copyright, and self-written material). It's a good collection. That it was recorded from the back of the hall is obvious; the resolution isn't as good as you'd expect from settings where they can put cameras everywhere they want. But it's good enough. The only regret I have in watching it is that I know there were some fun "audience gags" at some of those concerts (I was there), but none of those were included. Some can't be becuase the songs weren't; for example, the Vegetable Liberation Front, or maybe it was People for the Ethical Treatment of Vegetables, showed up for "Carrot Juice is Murder" one year, but that song isn't on the DVD. On the other hand, I remember uniformed flag-waving folks parading in for one performance of "Ye Jacobites By Name", which is on the DVD, but that's not the version they used. One of the things that makes Clam Chowder special is the relationship they have with the audience; I wish that had come out more on the DVD.

schulman

The vet confirmed that he's dehydrated, and he's on an IV now to fix that. That's a symptom, not a diagnosis, so I asked about the cause. The vet noted that Erik had a past diagnosis of "possible" cholangial hepatitis, and she said that sometimes this can happen in that case. I'm a little confused about the intermediate steps, as this is clearly an acute situation and that disease (if he even has it) is chronic. But the treatment is antibiotics, so maybe cholangial hepatitis means he's more susceptable to appetite-stealing bugs? Either I didn't know that or I had a profound memory failure. I'll need to have a conversation with my regular vet about this. (Today I saw the first available one.)

For the future she suggested that I keep some antibiotics on hand and start medicating at, if not the first sign, then maybe the second sign of trouble. Yes, I am leery of creating superbug, but I'm willing to be much more casual with my own health than with that of someone who can't speak up on the subject. So, so be it. (I don't know what antibiotic; she hasn't given it to me yet.)

Erik is staying at the clinic tonight so they can continue hydrating him and also run some blood tests. With luck, I should get him back tomorrow. Unfortunately, he's in the Fox Chapel office and Route 28 is not a fun place for me at night, but Dani will be out tomorrow night so I can't just get him to drive me over. Oh well; I want my cat back, so I'm not going to wait until the next morning if I don't have to.

The poor guy weighed 6.5 pounds this morning, down about 1.5 from his usual. Since my ability to detect such deltas is obviously not up to the task, perhaps I need to find a suitable scale and just get in the habit of weighing him regularly. The vet uses a pediatric scale (with a basket, presumably designed to hold infants); I wonder if that's the sort of thing parents use, or if it's just a doctor/hospital thing. Will check eBay later.

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

Erik (the underweight cat) has developed a voracious appetite (for him) in the last several days. I'm happy to oblige, but I wonder what the difference is. I did buy a new type of food to try out on him on spec, but he's also chowing down on the food he had previously shown little interest in. Maybe he just needed some new flavors to jump-start his appetite. It's probably pretty boring (culinarily, at least) to be a domestic dog or cat, getting the same stuff day in and day out. Think back to childhood and those "tuna casserole again?" moments, and that probably wasn't daily. :-)

Dani and I finally saw The Incredibles this afternoon. Fun movie. They probably should have included a family pet, who would exhibit absolutely no powers but keep you wondering. But maybe I'm being influenced by The Crossovers. :-)

We saw a matinee and all the previews were aimed at kids. Is that because that's what's attached to this movie, or because you get different previews at matinees than at evening shows? There was also a short feature -- haven't seen one of those since I was a kid -- and it, too, was pretty clearly for the kids. Well-done technically; insipid artistically. (I didn't catch a title.)