June This-And-Thats

I'm overdue to catch up on things so once again it's time to start typing and let it all out.  Well, not all.  I've not posted lately mostly due to stress.  My work had become, and still is, more stressful than it ever should be.  I'd like to elaborate but I really can't without giving too much detail.  Ever see that cartoon with the birds on the branches of a tree and the lower birds are getting shit on?

• I did take a vacation a couple weeks ago.  I didn't have any big projects but I did have a lengthy to-do list.  I managed to get most of it completed, including building an umbrella stand that my wife wanted to hold my grabber and the walking stick I got in Jamaica when we got married.  Just a small project, but I like making things out in the garage.  I'm certainly more of a rough carpenter than a finish carpenter, but I seemed to manage with this and my wife is happy.  The time off was mainly spent getting my head back and learning to deal with my job status and what I need to do if I want to change that.
• My wife has been healing well recently and has a few more weeks off work.  Basil hasn't had it so well, though.  He completed his round of antibiotics but it still didn't fully clear the UTI so he had to go back to the vet.  He now has more medicine and special food to help clear up the crystals in his urine and the infection.  We also found out he has a bad tooth that is causing him pain so we will have that taken care of as well.
• On a related note, I've shampooed the carpet in the computer room several times now.  Kate's friend Terry lent us her machine, and it has worked very well.  We've not found any spots where he's peed in quite a while but I kept smelling it so it may still have been happening, especially since we find he is not quite over the infection yet.
• Weather-wise we have been hot.  Hot and humid and sometimes very stormy.  Today is refreshingly comfortable, finally, and is the first time in a week we have been able to open the windows and enjoy the breeze through the house.  Now, if my wife would hurry up and heal we could go bike riding together!
• We've had our first fire pit of the year, the first of many, I hope.  I've been considering putting in a permanent fire pit in the back yard, I feel we would use it more often then.  I have enough cut wood for probably two more fire pits before I'll need to cut up the scavenged branches I have on the side of the garage.
• A Night Out for Goodman, a beer and chocolate tasting at the local Goodman Community Center was a lot of fun out with some friends.  I didn't manage to get a taste from all the vendors but as many as I could!  There were a dozen or so local bakeries/chocolatiers and maybe fifteen local breweries/distilleries giving out samples of their wares.  It was a beautiful evening with also a band and games, and all goes to charity.
• I've also not updated the garden blog in several weeks.  I plan on taking pictures today and posting over there another tour of the yard.  We lost one plant that I really like in a storm, but my wife brought in the flowering stalk and we've had it inside for almost a week now.  Something, either squirrels or rabbits, has been nibbling on some potted plants.  I moved one into the area between the gardens and it is still getting eaten so it must be squirrels there as rabbits can't get in.  And I've missed the full bloom of the lilies as all the petals have now fallen, same for the peonies.  But the day lilies are blooming now and the garden is looking very well.  I'll link it here when I post pictures over there, probably later today.

That's all I can think of for now.  There are a couple things I'm thinking of for an LLP post, but I need to find the time and gumption to do it.  After typing on a computer all day at work it's not exactly what I feel like doing in the evenings.  Oh, and we have another quarter cow coming real soon.  Well, I have pictures to take and I think my wife and I are going to get out for a bit now.

Recent Health Issues

We've been dealing with some health issues in our family recently, and for once it's not me.  First up, our cat Basil, and next is my wife Kate.

A few weeks ago Basil took a pee on the carpet beside my desk chair.  My wife got it cleaned up quickly and we kept an eye on him.  A week later he peed again behind my desk chair.  Okay, time to make an appointment with a veterinarian, we suspected he had a urinary tract infection and would need an antibiotic.  My wife found a nearby clinic and made an appointment.  On the day and on the way to that appointment he got so scared he peed into the towel in the cat carrier, useless for lab tests.  They sent her home with a small, expensive packet of water resistant litter and a kit to get a pee sample.  We had to get a little box for that litter, separate the cats and get Basil to pee in the new box with a small amount of strange litter in it.  Simple task, right?

Twice we kept Basil in the basement all day and twice he was out when we got home.  Both times with his brother Hamish's help, we're sure, one to unlatch the weak-latching door and the other to push the door, two cases of soda and a litter box out just far enough to squeeze through.  We were never going to get a sample like this.  Or if we did force it to work they'd be traumatized more than they'd already been.  In the meantime, every few days he would pee on the carpet again and we would scrub it up if we could find it.  Thankfully it was nice enough out that we could open the window some and air it out, too.

Finally, we arranged to take him in to the vet clinic and leave him until either he peed or they could extract a sample to verify the UTI.  It didn't take more than a couple hours, and even then he peed in fright not knowing those humans, but they were able to confirm the infection and issued antibiotics.  He's been on them for several days now and thankfully he seems to feel better.  He was pretty upset and hissy with Kate for a day or so after dropping him off, he blamed her and he let her know it.  I'll wait a few more days to be sure and then rent a carpet cleaner this weekend.

As for my wife, well, she's had ongoing issues for years and had surgery to correct this last week.  She said she doesn't mind what I say here, but I have my reservations.  I've had my own surgeries - 3 since I started this blog - and told my stories here but I don't feel her story is for me to tell.  Just know that she is doing very well.  Her post-surgery pain is less than she had before and she is raring to go - having taken zero of her prescribed painkillers.  She will be off work for some time yet so I think her biggest problems will be dealing with boredom and holding herself to her temporary limitations.  She is pictured in the bottom right of the pictures above, the back of her shoulder anyway.

Plant Day II

Two weeks after buying and potting several flowering plants we went and got some more.  Several seen here on the steps, a flowering bush to replace the sickly peony on the edge of the stump area, and sage and parsley plants for the garden that are not shown here.

Another pictorial tour taken after planting is over at the garden blog, if you wish to visit.  Also, I got the bat house up on the back of the garage.  No bats yet, but it is early and I am hopeful.









It's been a little busy around here lately so I haven't been posting much.  I will write about it soon, but for today let it be about the plants and our little part of the outdoors.  Today is another beautiful day - after more cool and rainy weather recently.  I should be doing something outside rather than typing on a computer inside.  I like how our yard has been evolving over the last several years, and I look forward to watching this year's plants grow, bloom and thrive.  Thanks for coming along.  Again, an up to date picture tour is here.

Plant Day!

Today was the spring day I went plant shopping.  We had a lot of pots to fill and I think I filled them well.  It was overcast with sprinkles this morning, perfect weather to beat the crowds so I got going early.  By midday it was sunny and beautiful outside so I'm sure the amateur gardeners were out in droves, crowding the plant stores and making it hard to move about and causing long lines at the cash registers.

I didn't really have a plan when I set out, just an idea of how many pots I had.  I tried to get plants that tolerate full sun and that looked nice to me.  I did get one for part shade by accident, I put it on the front step behind the front flower pot.  The front is the north side of the house so it should do well there.  This afternoon Kate and I went and got a couple hanging baskets, too, one for front and one for back.  We may still get more plants, there is still some space in the flowerbeds in back, we want to look at perennials to replace tulips on one or both sides of the front stoop and we still have planting to do in the garden.

This was really the first spring day that we could have all the windows open all day and enjoy the beautiful weather.  But that also means summer is right around the corner, and Tuesday is supposed to be the first day in the 80's F.  I always hope to keep the windows open but before you know it it's just too hot.  Oh well, we'll all - cats included - enjoy open windows while we can.

I'll take more pictures and post another yard and garden photo tour soon, possibly tomorrow, over at the garden blog.

Latest Listening Pleasure 26 - Dementia

In high school I had friends (yes, not many but some!) who either played instruments, had longer hair, enjoyed the same kind of music that I did or any combination of the above.  I'm still friends with some, and I've written about them here, while others have faded or pushed away.  One of my good friends from then, Mike, even lived with me for a while after high school.  Otherwise we still seemed to get together somewhat regularly, driving to and fro.  He continued to school an hour or two away but got hooked up with a band, Syrys, if I remember correctly.  School fell by the wayside for him as it did for me, but he was doing what he loved.  Eventually the band left small town Wisconsin and moved to a house in Chicago to seriously pursue music.  It was after that move the band, now named Dementia, put out an album called Recuperate From Reality.  Getting that album out was a great accomplishment.  That the album was recently re-released by an independent label is a wonderful recognition and validation of their efforts.  Too bad some of those involved sought more so it is just the one cd instead of a box set.  The 3-cd box set that it should have been would have been a better tribute - if they all could have agreed on things.  It's all in the past, this should be nothing more than a celebration of that past.  One would hope that would be the only motivation, but it seems not because only the one cd got re-released.

Mike, Skylar and Brian

Mike contacted me recently to let me know about the re-release and I ordered it immediately.  The album, Recuperate From Reality, was released in 1991 on Tombstone records, the re-release is available under these blue words.  A few days later he sent me a link to a YouTube video of Dementia playing at the Avalon in Chicago.  (He also emailed me a picture of me and him at least 25 years ago.  I was shirtless, tanned and skinny.  No, I will not post it.)  Unfortunately, I don't think the band lasted much longer after this show.  I believe both Skylar and Brian went to the west coast, I think separately.  Mike followed his own career path, too, and wound up in Michigan.  They had several bass players over the years, and one interesting fact is they once had a bass player named Matt Snell who more recently played with Five Finger Death Punch.  He appears on the last two tracks of the re-release, songs that weren't on the original CD.

I've heard this so much and knew all the guys (well, not all the bass players) so it's hard for me to be objective.  These were the times in the early nineties.  We were young and having loads of fun, probably lucky to have survived it at times.  But being close to it and having it and hearing it for so long, I can't tell, is it dated?  I don't think so, or maybe it's the production.  No matter, it will always remain a favorite in my collection.




Previous LLP Posts...
LLP 1 - Pain
LLP 2 - Nightwish
LLP 3 - Die Antwoord
LLP 4 - Pain part 2
LLP 5 - Andrew Bird LIVE
LLP 6 - Nightwish part 2
LLP 7 - Paramore
LLP 8 - Newsted
LLP 9 - U.D.O. LIVE
LLP 10 - Nightwish Imaginaerum Movie
LLP 11 - Kiss
LLP 12 - Rick Springfield
LLP 13 - Hyrax
LLP 14 - In This Moment
LLP 15 - Faster Pussycat LIVE
LLP 16 - Sebastian Bach
LLP 17 - Cradle Of Thorns
LLP 18 - Amaranthe
LLP 19 - Lindemann
LLP 20 - Halestorm
LLP 21 - Garbage LIVE
LLP 22 - Arcade
LLP 23 - Nightwish LIVE
LLP 24 - Ace Frehley
LLP 25 - Darkc3ll
LLP 26 - Dementia

A YouTube video of the whole 1991 album audio is after the break.

May The Fifth Be With You

Happy Friday!

Thanks Jonco!

May The Fourth Be With You

For all you Star Wars geeks, here's the Star Wars Holiday Special that you all want to forget.



I do remember watching this on television in 1978 - and it was never to be re-aired.   (Of course I also remember seeing the original movie in the theater with my friends back in 1977.  I remember playing with imaginary light sabers, acting out the scenes with my friends behind the Dixon theater waiting for one or our parents to come pick us up, several times we went.)  I liked the original trilogy as a youngster, but the newer ones I've not really seen much of, except for the one with the original characters back.  And then I only got it for us to watch as a nostalgic novelty.  I'm just not into this kind of thing anymore but I thought posting this today might be somewhat original and funny.  Well, we all like what we like so whatever it is you may as well let your geek flag fly high!

Petcube Video

I just took this video through the Petcube app, the first time I tried the video part.  I think the video taken was just over a minute but the file is 45 seconds.  It seems to be sped up a bit, and there is an episode of pixels.  The laser isn't the easiest to maneuver with your finger and over wifi, but overall not a bad first try, I think, and Hamish would probably agree.

New Gadgets, Petcube!

Recently I wrote how we received the Amazon Echo Dot for christmas.  It was a fun gadget, but it was just a novelty and not really utilized for anything.  That changed when I bought two outlets that connect to wifi to control power to whatever you plug into them.  So now, both lamps in the living room are controlled by voice with Alexa or by using the app from wherever you are.  Not a necessary thing, but I think it's pretty neat.

Since then, I was looking for a bluetooth speaker to use exclusively for Alexa.  I would up getting a bigger version of the Amazon Basics bluetooth speaker that I already have and like.  Now it is much easier to listen to music - anything we really want through Alexa and Amazon Prime.  Another use for the Dot, and a good one for us.

While I was getting that speaker I came across another gadget that caught my fancy, and I ordered it pretty quickly - the Petcube.  The Petcube is a 4 inch cube with a camera that connects to wifi that you can use to see your pets from wherever you are on your phone via the app.   When you log into the camera the cube itself makes a noise and a light on it turns blue letting you know the camera is live.  Through the app you can play with the cats with a laser or turn on the sound to talk to them.  You can also take a picture or video if they happen to be super cute.  If it's dark, they have a more expensive version with night vision, but again, I can turn on the lamps from anywhere with my phone.  There is also a feature you can pay for that will use it like security, recording when it detects loud sounds or movement.

The cats have become familiar with the noise it makes when it comes on, so when they hear it they will come out to the living room and start looking for the laser!  It's not the easiest to control, with your finger on your phone screen, but they do have fun with it.  And almost everyone I know has absolutely loved it when I showed it to them, other than one relative who acted rather dismissive but I think he likes to think he's on top of all the tech things so it's old news to him.  I think it's quite a lot of fun and still not something everyone has heard of, but I know several people that I showed it to who may have one of their own soon!

Late Easter Bunnies?

We lost the tree 2 years ago now, April 25 actually, and then we had much fewer squirrels in the yard last year. This year, a brood of what seem to be yearling - or maybe 2 year old - rabbits have moved into our yard.  Well, maybe not 'moved in,' as I think I would find out where they lived, but our yard has certainly been their playground lately.  I keep telling my wife I need a pellet gun - half-heartedly, of course - and she always exclaims her disagreement.  As long as they don't eat all the flowers that I'll buy this spring then I guess at least they give the cats something to watch.
My wife says there are four, but I have only ever seen three at a time.  I'm pretty sure this will continue until proof is presented...