Here is Sammy, crunching up the remainder of his chicken wing. He's such a chewer that I have to watch out for him chewing on electrical wires. But this crunching and chewing is really good for his teeth. He drags it off the plate so I have to put a towel down. He always leaves behind that little piece of bone every time.



Drizzle watch is on again for tomorrow night. I had a dream it rained, but that's about it for our region.

I'm switching back to Feline Pine litter to see if maybe it's the corn litter that Sammy's allergic to and causing the chin acne. It's not really bad at this point and I don't know how long a diet change takes to have an effect. All three cats continue to love the raw food. It's amazing how much Fred and Heidi like it. I don't have to use the tuna anymore to entice them to eat. The brand I'm using is called Bravo! and I use the chicken balanced version. But I do plan to buy an electric meat grinder and make my own raw food. But that's complicated and takes some time to research and get in to.

At Costco today I caved in and got a faux fur throw blanket mainly because I knew Sammy would love it. I could have gotten something in a subtle brown or white fur, but I couldn't resist the totally tacky cheetah print. As expected Sammy latched right onto it. His blanket fetish involves him biting and holding on with his mouth while kneading and sometimes he'll just suck on it and other times he'll clamp on with his mouth and try to hump it because he's totally aroused. Fred always had that blanket fetish thing too.



Oh, I should add... the fur throw had instructions for dry cleaning, fur method (!). But I had already put it in the wash for a rinse and medium dry before I saw that and it turned out just fine. It's all synthetic material, so it washes just fine. Ignore the label and use a gentle wash and dry.

So I just had a nice long email to my vet composed and it was lost when I tried to send it.
My kitty vet is hearing impaired, so it's actually better for me to email things in detail because in person it's a bit hard to go beyond the basic stuff.

That's what they jokingly call it on the news. There could be a 20% chance of something like a drizzle tonight. Who knows?

I've just been watching Freddie gnaw on a raw chicken wing. I got them for Sammy. He's got a bad case of kitty chin acne, so I'm trying a diet change. I wanted to get him on raw foods anyway, because I figured he was young enough to adjust to it, but I was surprised when Heidi and Fred totally loved it. I know I've tried raw food on them before and they'd look at me like I was an idiot for forgetting to cook it. But now it's fine with them. It's a different brand though.

Anyway, raw chicken wings are just good for cleaning and strengthening their teeth and giving them something to chew on. Sammy has been chewing on the plastic caps on all the door stops around the house. So I figured he'd be a natural for this and he was, but then Fred was standing right behind him, waiting for a turn.

I was watching Medium last night and marveling at how good it remains to be on a consistent basis without losing my interest. I knew it was on the bubble for NBC but figured with its ratings being better than any of their new shows getting renewed, like Southland, I figured it was OK. Not so. NBC gave it the axe but CBS has picked it up. It is a CBS/Paramount produced show, after all. CBS will put in on after Ghost Whisper on Fridays.

I loved the new Star Trek film. Haven't seen such an entertaining film in a long time. But I really had to laugh at this. Those who've seen it should know...

I'm surprised at how many still think Joaquin is being serious about his "career change". He's playing a part right now. He and Casey Affleck are doing some sort of spoof documentary thing and filming it all as they follow Joaquin around with cameras. The only difference between this and something like Spinal Tap is that they are filming this in real time, in real life. Normally, when a talk show appearance is needed for a spoof film, they'd do a fake one. But this was a real appearance on the show and Letterman is obviously in on it.

The Bale meltdown thing from TMZ was only released yesterday and already it's been turned into the latest hit remix on Youtube. Gotta love the Internet!



That Christian Bale can be a real scary dude.

Supposed to be cold tonight (42 degrees right now) and I was pondering whether to move some outdoor potted plants or not and just for the heck of it, I checked one of the weather sites. It's actually 9 degrees warmer right now in my home town in Michigan than it is here in San Diego. So I hauled my more special plants into the garage. I doubt it's going to be below freezing, or for very long if it does.

Yeah, I think. I'm not able to sleep at all. I have not done any more sandbagging to protect the foundation of our house. It's never been a problem before but I just worry more now. Hey, well at least the frogs will be happy. It will sound like a Louisiana swamp around here at night.

OK, we now officially have had enough rain. For now. The back yard is flooding too much and, well, I remember it always used to do that but it hasn't happened like that in over 15 yrs.. That's how long we've been going without heavy rain, it seems. I noticed one of my empty plastic garbage bins sitting outside my home office window which I knew I didn't leave there and apparently, the water has lifted it and it floated from the back, down along the side walkway. Oh, well. I shouldn't complain. I've seen much worse on the news.

Friday, yes! Phew.

I get real lazy when it comes to journal updates. And it's not like I don't have things to say. I just can't bring myself to type them.

Some weird things have been happening around here. A grandmother, a mother and two babies were obliterated because the military thought it was OK to fly a jet with one engine over a residential neighborhood instead of keeping it over the ocean or landing at Coronado. An old lady was abducted and thrown in the back of her own car and beaten and abused for a few days by some young punks, one of whom recently was in her house, selling her a vacuum cleaner. My mom is way to nice to people who come over, so now I have to warn her not to trust anyone at all, no matter how friendly and chatty they get.

It's supposed to rain. It's supposed to rain a lot. So yay. I put up the sandbags to prevent the flooding next to the patio. If it gets really cold, I may have to bring in the potted plants to the garage.

If you have too much time, check out these...

Puppy cam!!
Six Shiba Inu pups.

Super Obama World. Plays like the old Super Mario World.
It features lipstick-wearing pigs, lobbyists, a bridge to nowhere (famous Alaskan pork waste of money), Neiman Marcus and other department stores raided by the Palin family shopping sprees, a view of Russia and other suprises.

LOL! Cats and toilets!

I finally have the Youtube high quality thing figured out. Embedding is one thing, but I was having trouble just getting an uploaded video to have a hq version. I think it was more hit-or-miss early on, but it's working better now and you should be able to get a hq version for new uploads. Today I noticed that they now also have hq still images for embedded vids as well and getting that to work too is something to look out for. Only new vids will have that, however.

So after using some tips from this guy on Youtube, I reuploaded my Extreme Ways vid to see if I could get it to work. I also ran it through a sharpness filter to make it look more clear and sharp. The vid has a lot of motion and action which tends to come out blurry and blocky looking. So Youtube's encoding of it to flv format did add some blockiness that's not in the original, but it's still a hq version now and MUCH better looking than the standard version I had before...



I would explain the code trick needed, but I can't post any code and get it to show up as text. However, this is one of many tutorials that explains it. Using the option to not show related vids will cause the hq still image to not show up, so if you have "&rel=0" in your code, you'd have to delete it. Huge difference... Low quality still    High quality still

Today is definitely fire weather. Very windy here and we normally don't get as much Santa Ana wind around our area.

So, Life on Mars last night.... Not bad at all. They really did improve on the LA based version. Much faster pace, but that should have been the case with the show only being 42 minutes compared to the 50 minutes of the earlier one. Much better use of music and overall style. I don't like Gretchen Mol as much as the other actress they had playing Annie Norris, but her character is more accurately positioned in the sexist work environment. I liked Colm Meaney better than Harvey Keitel as Gene Hunt. Keitel looks too old for the part. Oh, and Sam's very Hutch-like tan leather jacket is now black. O'Mara reminds me a bit of Mel Gibson. That look in his eyes he gets.

Ratings were pretty good -- over 11 million viewers. So I hope it does OK. I just can't deal with liking any more new shows that end up cancelled. CSI, of course, pulled in over 20 million and the whole thing was great and it looks for now like season 9 is off to a good start.

Well, I did get the courage to call the cat-only vet and took Heidi over there the other day. As expected, the vet said it was best to let the tumor be for now. Cutting it out would shrink the opening for her eye. This vet is hearing-impared. She can hear a little, but relies on lip reading. However, she was able to determine that Heidi also has a heart murmer. Something Fred has and is common in old cats with hyperthyroid. It makes anesthesia a bit risky which means they don't even want to do teeth cleaning. Yesterday, Heidi acted very sick and didn't eat anything at all and felt a little cold to the touch. I thought we were going to have to take her over to the emergency clinic today (because all serious incidents happen when your vet's office is closed, don't they?), but today she acted much better and finally had her appetite back and is drinking water. She still acts like she isn't feeling very well and has been lying on the floor in strange places, so there has to be some kind of discomfort.

The cancer on Heidi appears to have made a return. I figured it would. She had a cancerous growth over one of her eyes which has been removed twice before. I still have a snapshot pic of her after the first time in my written log I have for her where I record her daily glucose readings and insulin shots. Which naturally I can't find right now on my computer which means it was from a long time ago and is probably shoved over onto our old computer.

This has always been certain to return because while it looked like a bump with a well-defined border, the truth is that the actual cancer cells snake out beyond that and are almost never totally removed. In humans, well, you don't want this type of cancer (spindle cell). In dogs, my vet said it kills pretty fast, but in cats, it can be likely that they die from something else. But I've been managing her old-age diseases and she's 20+ years, so it's like, what's it going to be? With her blood glucose readings shooting out of control lately, I have to wonder if the cancer isn't effecting things. Has it gone systemic?

I'm not sure where I want to take her for this. The last vet who did a fine surgical job of removing this in a very sensitive area that will effect her face and her looks has sold off his practice. The vet I've been going to is great for lots of things, but I don't know. I'm thinking of going to the cat-only vet who bought out the one who did the previous surgery. I'm thinking of calling her. But Heidi appears fine right now and when you do things to put things in motion it can be that you put death in motion. And right now she's just alive and that's OK right now.