Fast Fiction

I tried fixi+g my keyboard this eve+i+g. I thought I discovered the difficulty - a fleck of +ougat u+der there. But alas, all the dog hair removal has +ot helped.

I’m +ot sure what to do +ow. The computer is out of its warra+ty period. The problem seems so slight, +ot somethi+g I would pay more tha+ $25 to resolve.

Perhaps I should just use this as a+ oppportu+ity to alter my vocabulary to excise the difficult letter. This’ll be hard. Yes, very hard.

First, an update on my keys. My N is still misbehaving. So, if you notice one missing someplace, it’s because I was typing too fast to hit the key eight times. (There were other choices for numbers that were more accurate, but they required the dreaded letter.)

On Monday morning as I was going into the house through the side door I saw a tan Volvo come around the curve in front of my house, pass closely by a blue Lexus and give it a glancing blow, shearing off the side view mirror.

The Volvo barely made a course correction upon striking the Lexus. The Lexus shuddered and the mirror and its control wires dangled down against the door and the housing flipped towards the front of the car.

This is probably not so uncommon, and that the car didn’t stop is little surprise. I suspect that the Volvo lives on the street, but I don’t remember everyone’s car. For the record, the Lexus was parked on the wrong side of the street. Well, I call it the wrong side of the street, but someone removed the signs years ago when they built that new house. Most of us still understand that they shouldn’t park there, not really because someone might hit you, but mostly because there’s no room for two way traffic if people park on both sides and no one likes backing up around a curve when you come nose to nose there.

I left a note on the Lexus’ windshield as I left for the work with a brief account of what I witnessed and my contact info.

Here’s why I mention it.

I haven’t heard a thing.

I don’t know quite what to think, I mean, I don’t know what to expect with such things. A few weeks ago an ATM gave me more money than I requested. I returned it, though I wasn’t sure if the money belonged to the credit union or some user of the ATM. I guess I’m asking for closure. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I’m a writer or that I watch too much TV where things are always tied up in neat little packages.

Of course this post is ending much the same way, with no real conclusion.

Last spring I went to Catalina for the first time. I did the tourista trip, Catalina Express to Avalon for the day. Yesterday I had a completely different experience with the island, starting with the fact that I never stepped foot on it but fell in love with it from afar. I took a trip set up by the American Cetacean Society called “Around Catalina with John Olguin.”

We departed from Long Beach along with 500 other people on the Catalina Countess - a huge three story boat that gave us a smooth crossing. It was hazy and overcast but the visibility was pretty good. Shortly after rounding the Palos Verdes Peninsula we spotted two gray whales heading north. We slowed and circled, and caught sight of them once from a distance before we sped off to our destination, the far side of Catalina. During the crossing we had special guest lecturers, including John Olguin giving his amazing recreation of the sounds that whales make (memorized from a record he had), which included the buzzing lawnmower like sounds of pilot whales to the booming thumps of sperm whales to the mournful songs of humpbacks.

As we approached the west end, the first thing evident is that the heavy rains have made Catalina vividly green and lush looking. Even with the heavy clouds, the color was striking. The sun was poking through the cloud wrapped hilltops and illuminating the valleys. Next thing we saw close into shore was a pod of dolphins—make that a megapod—there were thousands, at least two miles long and a half a mile across. The long-beaked common dolphins came out to meet the boat and delighted everyone by riding both in our bow wake and surfing behind in the boat’s wake for about ten minutes.

We headed around the western tip and kept a keen eye out for Gray Whales. Though they usually hug the coast on their southern migration, their north migration usually takes advantage of the currents and they skirt along the western side of the island. But we didn’t spot them right away, instead it was a small pod of Bottlenose Dolphins speeding off, probably to feed on nearby squid. Their course paralleled ours for about 10 minutes. Within minutes we spotted some telltale, heart-shaped blows off our starboard and came about to catch up, finding four whales traveling in a loose group. We followed them for close to ten minutes as we watched the megapod of common dolphins we saw from the other side of the island streaming out in a long dark line several miles long towards San Nicolas Island. The same direction we saw the bottlenose heading a half hour earlier.

After that burst of activity we settled in to watch the backside of Catalina, with fishing boats anchored close to shore and our geologist guide gave us a wonderful primer on the history of the island and pointed out relevant features. During part of that lecture a Bald Eagle was spotted in the air as it was harassed by some seagulls. Up on the little coves and rocky outcroppings were sea lions and harbor seals hauled out to sun (well, not much sun) themselves in complete seclusion.

Far out to sea we saw more blows from other groups of gray whales - too far for us to catch as they were going north and we had to continue south. Rounding the east side of the island brought us back within sight of civilization as we passed the quarry where most of the seawalls in Los Angeles got their rocks. Shortly after rounding the bend we came upon the reverse-osmosis desalination plant for the island residents and then the town of Avalon. Off in the distance were more dolphins throwing themselves out of the water and spinning. The boat had already spent so much time with the whales and other common dolphins that it was time to head back to the dock in Long Beach. As we got closer the clouds cleared and the water turned from turquoise to prussian blue. Getting off the boat, I wanted to relive the day and look at all my photos.

The gray whalewatch season ends in a few weeks, but we’re already making plans to go see the Humpback whales in the Santa Barbara Channel in May and Blue Whales in July.

(cross-posted at blogging.la with more photos)

I was reading through my regular science blogs this morning and found a link to the ESA site where they’ve captured some shots of volcanic activity in Russia.

That’s a photo of the Kliuchevskoi and Sheveluch volcanoes erupting at the same time on the lonely Kamchatka Peninsula (which most of us know from playing Risk).

The European Space Agency site has been following the activity for a while.

The more southerly 4835-metre-high Kliuchevskoi volcano began its latest eruption on 17 January 2005. By 7 March its consequent lava flow had reached the Erman glacier and started to melt it, causing a threat of potential mudslides. The hot volcanic material in contact with the surrounding ice and snow caused secondary explosions, hurling material as far as eight kilometres into the air. 

Above it is Kamchatka’s most northerly active volcano Shiveluch ñ also known as Sheveluch. It is 3283 metres high and started its latest eruption on 27 February 2005. The erupting material covers an area over 700 kilometres across with a layer of ash about 150 kilometres wide and eight centimetres thick, extending westward to the Okhotsk Sea. A ten-km-wide lava flow destroyed the Shiveluch seismological station, located about eight km from the volcano.

If there’s one other thing that this photo shows me, it’s that it looks damn cold in Kamchatka right now.

As blogged yesterday, The Man and I went to Whole Foods yesterday morning.

We picked out our Sunday evening meal which was to be a baked chicken with root vegetables (parsnips, potatoes and carrots).

After returning from the marathon The Man set to prep the chicken and opened the 7-pound, free-range, organic bird. It smelled like a garbage dumpster on a hot day. We’d gone right from the grocery store to home and put it in the fridge right away - that bird was bad when we brought it home, that’s the only explanation.

We immediately put into several plastic bags to cloak the smell, dug out the receipt and I trucked back up to Whole Foods - at the exact time that I loathe shopping, 5 PM. The place was mobbed, but I got up to the service desk and returned my chicken. The fellow kind of glowered at me, as if I’d some something wrong and I said I was concerned and that they should check their entire inventory because there was definitely something not right with that bird.

He nodded and gave me a merchandise credit. I’d presented my receipt and the original packaging and he was giving me a merchandise credit? He said I could redeem it for cash at any of the checkstands - and I glanced around to the Sunday pre-dinner lines and sighed. I was there to get a replacement dinner anyway (we were going to now have leftovers and a big salad so we needed some greens and tomatoes).

I fetched my new food and got in line, cashed out and thought to myself that when I’m paying $18 for a chicken, I should get much better treatment when they sell me a spoiled bird. Starting with an apology.

I was booked to go out on the 10AM boat from Redondo Sportfishing, but their boat is in the shop.

So no boat this week.

There are very few opportunities left before the end of the season. Even though the migration (next week begins the “turnaround time” where we’ll see as many southbound whales as northbound) lasts through the end of April, the whale watch boats stop going out (except for charters) at the end of March.

Next weekend, The Man and I are going on a naturalist trip that goes around Catalina Island - it’s a whole day boat with the founder of the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium founder, John M. Olguin. I have this image of all the whales and dolphins native to this area just hiding on the other side of the island. That we’d pass around the west side of the island and they’ll just be popping out of the water over there on the mysterious far side of the island.

The big question is what shall I do with my now free Sunday morning? So far I’ve done a load of laundry. Later a trip out to Whole Foods and Petco.

And of course my afternoon is booked today with a very important activity. I’m crashing the Marathon. Will has already completed the bike tour and started the Marathon about 20 minutes ago. I’ll join him somewhere around mile 20 to boost him with a little turkey jerky and M&Ms. I’ll try to walk with him for a couple of miles. The trick is figuring how to meet up with him - but he’s moblogging as he goes along so we’ll always know where he is.

I’ve got a slight problem with my laptop keyboard.

My N key doesn’t seem to be functioning consistently.

That is, sometimes, well, most times I press it, it doesn’t work. Which means that a lot of the time when I’m typing, I have to go back and fill in my Ns.

I took the key off tonight ad cleaned the dog hair and dust out from under it, hoping that would help, but it doesn’t seem to have done any good.

My eventual plan for this computer is to make it my desktop and give it an external firewire hard drive for extra storage. Good thing about this plan is that I’d probably hook up an external keyboard, so this N problem would be a thing of the past.

How is it, do you think, that the N key has given out before any of the others.

I think I might have to go back and check over my novels and do a letter occurrence chart.

Sean at Blogging.la has this way of making me sign up for new web services (he sends me an invite). So over the past year or so I’ve signed up for a variety of sites, including Buzznet.com, Tribe.net, Meetup.com, and now Flickr.com.

I’ve resisted Flickr because I already have a photoblogging site, I have my own site (typetive.com - nothing there yet) and The Man and I are about to launch our own photo gallery site. My other problem with them is the fact that they dropped the E in flicker. Dunno, just bothers me. 

But I have to say, I like Flickr quite a bit. It’s similar to buzznet in that it’s a community and you can leave comments and have friends and syndicate content. What it has that buzznet doesn’t have is the ability to show high quality photos. Buzznet can’t show anything bigger than 400x400. Though Flickr’s default is a little smaller than that, if you see a photo you like, you can see it in its full scale size if you want. Buzznet lets you hop right into content though - when you go to someone’s home page you see their little recent gallery, their most recent image with all the comments. Flickr makes you click on an image before seeing that stuff, which I think makes the community part of browsing other people’s photos just a little tougher.

Flickr is new enough that they don’t have a lot of advertising yet, and some of buzznet’s banner ads on their site bug the crap out of me. I can’t stand animated banner ads and I loathe ones with sound to the point that I do not keep the sound on with my laptop at home and I will leave a site that has any advertising with sound if I’m at the office and not go back until the next day when I figure they’ve rotated to a less intrusive ad.

So, for the moment I have both services in my left column. Buzznet’s Marc Brown graciously gave me unlimited uploads when I signed up and I’m really fond of the easy to use service and of course I’ve made friends there. Flickr has an upload limit of 10 megs per month, which is quite a bit (and I expertly maxed it out last night!). At the moment I’m duplicating my content on both streams. Flickr is offering their “daily zeitgeist” animated badge that you see over there. (Will also has one on his site.) Anyone have any thoughts on which they like better? Or should I just go back to hand coding whatever images I want to have their and forget this syndicated stream stuff?

Since it looks like the weather is clearing, the whale watch boats are poised to re-enter the seas.

I’m planning on going out on Friday from Redondo Beach with my mother to see what’s out there.

I’m not going to be working the boat, I haven’t been able to get booked on a boat for a while since I’ve been sick. That’s okay, since I won’t be docenting, I’ll be able to take up space at the front of the boat and get some fantabulous shots and give a personal narrative about whale biology to my mom.

Well, one of the things about being sick is that I have watched more movies on TV in the past three days than I think I have in three years.

Here’s a little rundown and some recommendations:

The Lady Eve - Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. Directed and written by Preston Sturges. Great comedy caper where Barbara is from a family of card sharps and she fleeces Henry Fonda on a cruise ship and then goes back again to break his heart. Surprisingly sexy for 1941.

The Man Who Knew Too Much - James Stewart and Doris Day. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. A classic. James & Doris are traveling in Northern Africa when they are mistaken for spies and their son is kidnapped. They chase the kidnappers to London where they try to piece together why their son is being held. Nicely crafted and intimate, more lighthearted than most other Hitchcock movies.

Lover Come Back - Doris Day, Rock Hudson and Tony Randall. Directed by Delbert Mann. Screwball farce. Doris & Rock work for rival ad agencies. Rock attempts to seduce Doris in order to keep her from getting a spurious advertising client. Doris displays a collection of impossibly ugly hats in this movie but the interplay between them all is marvelous.

The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer - Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple. Directed by Irving G. Reis. Teenaged Shirley gets a crush on a painter, Cary, and Myrna, a judge, sentences him to date her until she looses interest. Not terribly inspired. But I love Cary Grant.

Gambit - Michael Caine and Shirley McClaine. Directed by Ronald Neame. Michael hires Shirley to help him gain access to a rich art collectors apartment as she looks exactly like the collector’s dead wife. It’s an interesting caper, but the relationship part of it fell a little flat.

Midnight Lace - Rex Harrison, Doris Day and Myrna Loy. Directed by David Miller. Doris is an American married to a British businessman when she starts getting threatening phone calls and everyone thinks she’s making it up to get attention from her husband. Nice twists. Doris screams and is off her rocker most of the movie, kind of helpless and all that, but I found it nicely done.

Mrs. Dalloway - Vanessa Redgrave, Natscha McElhone, Michael Kitchen and Alan Cox. Adaptation of Virgina Woolf novel directed by Marleen Gorris. Nicely done though a little ponderous tale of Mrs. Dalloway throwing a party. I saw The Hours when it came out and like it as well.

Of all of these, I’ve only seen The Lady Eve before and The Man Who Knew Too Much. I’m glad that TCM was so cooperative to put on good movies to distract me for a few days.

I’m going to try to go to the office tomorrow. My mother arrives tomorrow evening for a 10 day stay.

Gah! I’m sick as a dog.

It started on Friday night with a sore throat.

Saturday I woke up with a tight chest and cough. But we carried on throughout the day with our plans. A visit to Orange County to have lunch with the in-laws. A stop at the mall to finally use a gift certificate from Christmas. Then a little time at home and some dinner. Later we stepped out to a local bar to for a little blogger get-together.

Later that night I had a slight fever and by morning it was a sure fever. Good that my doctor has Sunday morning hours so I went off to see here. A course of antibiotics, a new inhaler for my asthma, some cough suppressant and I was off to get better.

Fevers persisted Sunday and Monday with brief respites from some ibuprofen. Today I’m doing a bit better, but still a low grade fever. And of course there’s the cough. I’ve been trying my best not to, since I tore those intercostals last year with the same bronchitis difficulty. So I just feel like I’m drowning all the time.

Hopefully I caught early enough and it’ll just be one course of antibiotics this time.

Still, no going to work tomorrow since I’m still running a fever. Mom had a rule, no going out for 24 hours after a fever breaks.

Just in case anyone was wondering about Becky, she’s doing great. We’ve got her on vitamin K for her clotting problem (whatever the cause) and a little med for her thyroid. I have her the last of the steroids this morning so I’m hoping by the end of the weekend she’ll stop being so damn food obsessed.

We’re off to the vet again on Tuesday for another checkup, but she seems well on the way, if not already recovered.

I went through all the trouble of getting rid of about 25 gmail invites earlier this week only to find out that I have 50 more.

I’m not sure what my compulsion is to give them away. I think I feel that way about all useful things that I have no use for.

I wonder if gmail tracks these things - who gives away how many invites and who they give them to? And if you looked at it it would be a huge radiating graphy thing (I don’t know what that’d be called, that shape where each point would have lines radiating and the ends of those would radiate further). Like the transmission graph of some veneral disease or something.

Anyway, not that I’ve compared gmail to vd, do you want one?

I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember the ad campaign that Lifesavers had back in the eighties. “Lifesavers, a part of living.”

Lifesavers and their ad campaigns have changed. I don’t know what their current advertising is, but I’ll tell you their product is bugging me.

They changed the five flavor roll. Okay, maybe that’s old news. I don’t buy them that often.

The current five flavor roll contains the following flavors:

Cherry
Raspberry
Watermelon
Blackberry
Pineapple

The old flavors were:

Cherry
Lemon
Lime
Orange
Pineapple

If I could design my own roll, it would contain the following:

Tangy Tangerine (found in the tangy fruits)
Pineapple (classic flavor)
Lemon (classic flavor)
Pina Colada (tropical fruits)
Banana (tropical fruits)

But I guess change is part of life. They always mess with things that are perfectly fine. They did it with froot loops. Used to be you could go into a store and buy a piece of furniture and then five years later go in there again and buy the same thing again. Now everything changes with the times. What is the world coming to that we can’t just be happy with lemon lifesavers?

Late last fall a few bits of my one published play came out in two anthologies. I still haven’t been paid for this (note to self - send note to publisher). But I digress.

On Friday I got a fan note.

Really.

Here’s the best part:

Just wanted to drop a note because I was looking for monologues and found one of yours in the 2004 Best Men’s Stage Monologues.

Your writing is amazing.  You know, you go through these monologue books and the pieces just don’t seem to stand up on there own but yours…it sucked me in! I studied acting some 16 years ago and haven’t worked on the stage for about 8 years.  I wanted to get back to the craft and am currently taking a monologue audition class.  So anyway, I’ve been going crazy trying to find a monologue that I can connect with…then I read Stewart from Redeemer…powerful, so many levels of emotion in one speech (his confession about the accident).

-Michael

Whee! I have to remember to write more fan letters. I imagine everyone needs to hear stuff like that on a regular basis.

I’m sure you never expected such a thing from me. And of course it’s not what you expected.

I predict that within the next five years the superbowl pre-game coverage will include a red-carpet-style arrivals. That’s right, people will arrive for the skyboxes, the various sports stars and celebrities and they’ll be asked what they’re wearing and they’ll say “Nike” or “Champion” or “from that guy in the parking lot.”

I kept seeing these headlines for the past two days:

Stewart to Star in ‘Apprentice’ Spin-Off

I don’t watch The Apprentice, I don’t care much for reality TV but I was actually excited to hear that Jon Stewart might head a spin-off of the Donald Trump show. Now that’s a reality show I’d actually audition for!

Alas, it’s Martha Stewart. Pfft!

The thing about being an early adopter of new technology is that you’re a bit of a guinea pig.

My 2004 Toyota Prius (I call her Dyna) had a software malfunction yesterday while I was driving to my whale watch class.

The system threw up an alert on all screens with alerts a’beeping. It continued to function, but just didn’t want me to continue driving.

What happened isn’t clear. I was driving along, actually getting pretty good mileage with my tank total (about 90 miles on the tank so far) at about 53 MPG. My battery was fully charged with all green bars and even though I was driving on battery the full indicator didn’t change for at least a minute. I thought it odd, but then again I was getting an infinite amount of miles per gallon and when driving in rush hour traffice it’s like winning the game. The traffic was moving, at about 25-40 MPH. I was going 38 when the system started its warning. The car was driveable, in fact besides the lights, there seemed to be nothing wrong with the car. I was in the far left lane and I immediately put on my signal to merge off the freeway. The fellow next to me did not immediately oblige so I put on my hazards and everyone let me off. I made it to the Exposition Blvd. offramp and parked myself in the LAPD Internal Affairs office parking lot.

I called Toyota’s roadside assistance and they said they’d tow my car to the closest dealer, which happened to be Carson where I bought the car. In retrospect I should have insisted that they take it to Hollywood Toyota where I last had it serviced, and of course the closest location to my home.

I talked to the service guys this morning and they can’t figure out why the car was giving me the errors and said that it’s driveable and I can come get it. They called Toyota’s helpline for additional guidance and have not heard back from them yet. So I’m going to leave the car with them until they know why it did that. There’s another brake light wiring recall on it right now anyway that I needed to have done and they needed to order the part.

I’ll just figure out how to get to and from work the next couple days and it’ll all be okay.

One of the things I was looking forward to during jury duty was taking some photos during the long lunch break.

When I parked my car on the roof of the parking structure at the corner of First and Hill, I saw the early morning sun on the concert hall and seriously thought about starting my day that way. But I was an obedient little juror and hurried along to my duties.

I went during my two hour lunch. Though it wasn’t really that warm today, I’ll admit that this place is like a toaster oven on a sunny day.

I’ve taken so many photos with my camera that it’s rolled over!

I hit photo number 10,000 today sometime downtown. Now the camera started over with file naming at DSC00001.jpg.

Yikes, that’s a lot of photos. And until today I’d saved them all. But I’m out of room and have to make more space for the good ones.

Here it is ... guess where I was.

This morning I reported at 7:30 AM for Jury Duty at the Los Angeles Superior Court. At 3:40 PM I departed the Mosk Court Building with a slip of paper that said that I had completed my task and was released from service for twelve consecutive months.

More on the experience later.

At the moment I need to clear off space on my hard drive, as I keep getting messages that my storage space is critically low. Must be too many blurry pictures of dolphins taking up all that room.

I did a long blog entry with lots of great photos over at blogging.la if you wanna go see that one too. I don’t like to do cross-posts, so don’t worry, this is not the same entry.

This morning I was booked on a whale watch boat out of Redondo Beach (Redondo Sportfishing). The boat is the Voyager, the same one I went out on Monday the 17th. This was a morning trip, so the light is different and I was a little worried that it would be cold out on the water.

The air was still and the water calm (though the swells were still about three feet) and the water was spectactularly clear.

The landing didn’t send out any boats yesterday, as high winds and swells kept the whale watchers landlocked.

Today was vastly different than last time, mostly because there were three other naturalists on board. The fellow who was the leader was fabulous. He had a wonderful sense of timing, giving basic information to fill the time and then giving out relevant information when we were looking at the actual creatures.

In addition to the mentor naturalists were two others. One was a woman who had huge numbers of patches and pins on her jacket, I think going back at least ten years. She had a bag with all sorts of stuff, including patches and pins that she sold on behalf of the organization and reference sheets to show the passengers.

I love the trips. I enjoy hanging out at the railing and talking to the passengers about what’s right in front of them (or maybe their camera or other travels). I still haven’t taken the microphone though. I’m not sure what’s holding me back. It’s not like I don’t know the material. I’m not afraid of speaking in front of groups. But maybe I just enjoy being down in the trenches. Well, how am I supposed to know that I prefer that until I try the microphone? Okay, next time! Promise.

I found this on Stacie‘s blog and thought I’d propagate it. (Hey! She invited me!)

The goal of this exercise is to identify nine other bloggers that you would like to meet for dinner/drinks. The only caveat is that these bloggers must be strangers—you haven’t met them before. State the blogger’s name, a link to the blog, and why you would like him/her to be in attendance.

I regularly read about twenty blogs. But most are by people I know. So this’ll be tough. (Because some blogs I read are not necessarily by folks I’d like to dine with!)

1. Kevin L. Hoover - The Arcata Eye Police Log - okay, it’s not really a blog, but I read it regularly and it’s not exactly journalism. More like non-fiction poetry.

2. Tony Pierce - Busblog - because he’s a local and I think I could learn a lot about being a consistent blogger from him.

3. Aaron Logan - Loblogomy - I’m sure he’s too busy with the medical stuff, but I like his photos. Maybe he could figure out what’s wrong with the dog.

4. Brian Overton - Weirdwriter - I’d like to kick his ass for not posting more often, especially not posting about the squids washing up all over SoCal this month.

5. Cory Doctorow - BoingBoing - he’s self-published and successful and all

6. Paul Davidson - Words for My Enjoyment - it’s not so much a blog as an often updated list o’ funny things.

7. Brendan Powell Smith - The Reverend - the man behind the lego bible.

Um, I’m at a loss from there. Most of the other blogs I read regularly, I actually know the people who write them.

UPDATED: I thought of two more that I really should have included.

Well, poor Becky is starting really hate going to the vet.

This has been her life this week:

Tuesday morning - visit to the vet - shots, bath & nail trim
Thursday morning - visit to the vet - stay for the day, more shots, blood test
Thursday evening - visit to the vet for overnight stay & tests
Friday morning - pickup from the vet
Saturday morning - visit to the vet - more shots & blood tests

At the moment the doctor has ruled out the previously suspected Immune-Mediated Thrombocytopenia because she has no immune response indicators in her blood. Her ears are still swollen, though not nearly as badly as they have been earlier this week - just a little bit thicker at the base, but normal at the ends.

The vet still thinks that whatever is causing her blood in the urine and swollen ears has something to do with her blood clotting - whether immune overactivity, an allergic reaction or blood disorder.

We have her on a raft of medications - steroids, antibiotics, something for her thyroid (because one test came back with abnormal levels) and now vitamin K to help her clotting. She’s really starting to hate me. I might have to start hiding the pills in the cheese again. It’s not hard with most of the little pills, but the antibiotic is a regular sized capsule.

Here’s the latest - her ears are still very pink on the insides, but hang pretty much normally now.

This week’s LA Insight might be in answer to the request for more photos on LA Blogs. Or maybe just a new years way to shake things up.

I’m a little late in posting because of the doggy stuff (back from the vet again, $240 poorer and still no answers), but here are some photos that I’ve taken in Los Angeles in the past year or so. Click on the thumbnails for a 350x350 pop-up of the images.

Well, we took her back to the vet.

Dr. Jimerson thinks it’s an autoimmune disorder. The Man left Becky for some more tests and they discovered blood in her urine and they’ve also noticed small broken blood vessels in her mouth that can indicate a platelet problem.

The doctor called it Immune-Mediated Thrombocytopenia. Basically, her immune system is attacking her platelets. It doesn’t look like it’s a bad attack, as she shows none of the more drastic symptoms like lethargy or trouble breathing. So they’re keeping her overnight where they’ll boost her steroid levels to fight the inflammation and whatever is attacking her platelets. This web page seems to indicate that there’s a 50/50 chance that we’ll get through this and she’ll never have trouble again. We’re hoping and praying for her.

Folks have always noticed that Becky has bat ears. If she’s looking right up at you, her ears perk straight up and look like bat ears.

Right now they’re still too heavy to do that. I’ve got a fat eared dog. A fuschia pink fat eared dog.

I took some photos this morning:

If you’re curious about some before and after, I found some similar poses from some photos from last June to compare her ears.

I’m still waiting to hear back from the vet about her blood tests and of course ask for something else to relieve her symptoms.

UPDATE: 3:35 PM - I just talked to the vet and he said that her bloodwork was normal. I told him that her ears were still HUGE and he said bring her back in. So, The Man is loading her into the car for a return visit.

Our little Becky is experiencing some sort of massive allergic reaction. As a result of this, she’s all swelled up. Most notably her ears are swollen. I don’t mean the ear canals, I mean those floppy fur covered things - they’re thick and heavy and full of fluid.

This started early yesterday morning. She wasn’t upstairs outside the bathroom door when I got out of the shower and I called for her and she came up, she didn’t seem like herself. She made a couple of passes at the bed as if she was going to jump up (she has to get a running start), she gave up. I knelt down to check her out and pet her and immediately felt her huge eats and hot face.

I got dressed and took her right to the vet (well outside for her morning business first). After a rather long wait Dr. Jimerson over at Gateway Animal Hospital saw her and said that it was some sort of systemic allergic reaction. We don’t know what she’s allergic to, but he wanted to keep her for the day to run some tests and give her a few shots. (They also trimmed her nails and gave her a bath.) She weighed a full five pounds more than she did last summer and the doctor said it was probably all water. Now five pounds on me is uncomfortable, I can’t imagine what it’s like for a dog that usually weighs thirty pounds.

Now she’s got three different prescriptions, one for her eyes, one antibiotic for any lingering infection and a steroid to reduce her inflammation.

This morning she didn’t seem much better, her ears though better yesterday after The Man picked her up at the vet were almost back to normal but this morning they were thick and full of fluid again.

The good thing is that she’s in good spirits. She’s still peppy and responsive, eating her food as normal but drinking lots (and peeing lots).

I called the vet and he said to give the drugs more time to work. They also took some blood samples and won’t have results until tomorrow. So for now we’ll just wait and keep an eye on her.

This little thing I found via boingboing.net is the best!

It’s a link generator for the NY Times.

I link there all the time, but of course if someone doesn’t click on the link to the story in the first week, it’s gone.

But this generator creates a non-expiring link to any story on the current NY Times!

Sweet!

This weekend I went up to Pasadena to exchange a gift and decided that the confluence of events meant it was time to try the new “drinking chocolate” from Starbucks known as Chantico(tm).

I got a Starbucks card charged up with $20 from some co-workers and there I was at a mall with a cafe.

But let me back up about 22 years.

When I was in college I took at trip to Spain with my high school Spanish class. When we got to Madrid, we were too early to check into our hotel. It was barely mornining (about six am) so our tour guides and chaperones took us to Plaza Mayor where we walked the quiet plaza with it’s grand arches and huge space that would later in the day be filled with throngs of touristas and Madrilenos. We rested there for an hour with our empty cameras and had churros y chocolate.

Oh, Man! The stuff was like hot pudding, thick and flavorful and of course the plainness and crunch of the churros was the perfect compliment. There was nothing like this available back in Mechanicsburg and I was in love.

When I got to college, I enjoyed a Sunday morning tradition with my live-in boyfriend at the time - a bagel and Mexican hot chocolate. We’d walk from our little two bedroom apartment (that we shared at one time with three other guys) about a half a mile through the Arcata Plaza to Los Bagels. Not only was this my first exposure to Ibarra hot chocolate (which they made the right way with milk), but also this is where I fell in love with guacamole. Yes, my Sunday breakfast was a garlic bagel with heaps of fresh guacamole and a hot chocolate.

I’ve been searching for that Spanish drinking chocolate ever since. Granted, my tastes have changed quite a bit since I was sixteen. My substitute has been hot pudding. That’s right, I make Jell-o Cook & Serve pudding and then eat it before it sets. But it’s pudding and it’s never chocolately enough for me.

Chantico comes in one size. And that’s not a bad idea. It’s only six ounces and before you go saying, “where’s my grande!” you don’t need more than six ounces.

It is smooth, hot and sweet but has a wonderful mouth feel (see the fat content on this stuff). The chocolate flavor sticks around and gives a slight dryness to it (so much so that I recommend some water with whatever you’re having).

I think it’s great. But it really is very chocolately and I think it’s best served with a pastry that’s not sweet. This is not something you’d have a pecan sweet roll with. I think a plain scone or croissant is a good compliment, and if you went with something flavored, I think I’d stick to raspberry.

So, my long search for that European-style thick drinking chocolate is over. Is this something I’ll swig like coffee? Certainly not. It’s a drink for enjoying like a dessert or maybe a full meal. Yes, I’ll go back and order it again. After all, it was a $20 Starbucks card ... I’ve got six more waiting there for me!