Bogieblog

Stings to Scale

Amy Kane introduces her readers to Schmidt's sting pain index, to whit:

1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.

2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.

2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.

3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.

3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.

4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.

Amy claims that fire ants are worse than Schmidt indicates on his scale - I just hope never to find out (a good reason to stay out of Texas it seems).

Fuzzy Eyeball

Tuesday evening Fuzzy ws squinting with his right eye. I checked it out and couldn't find any probelms so figured he just had dust or something of that order in it.

Wednesday, Fuzzy's eye was shut and leaking a bit of fluid (although not continuously. I rinsed it out with saline but couldn't do anything else for him (ever tried to get all 3 eyelids open on a cat that doesn't want to open any eyelids - not happening). I took him to work with me and managed to get a vet appointment for that morning. After leaving 1 hour and 15 minutes before the appointment (I work that far away), Fuzzy was seen by Nancy, one of our regular vets. After numbing up the eye, squeezing out lots of gunk, putting in some dye, turning on the black light and turning off the regular light she declared that his eye was fine. Whew!

Seems he has an abscess underneath the eyelid. So I came away with antibiotic ointment and pills to be administered twice a day. He got to go back to work with me (otherwise, it would have added another 45 minutes to my trip).

He was a very good kitty; despite feeling ill, he never complained about being in the vehicle or being in the crate. I did offer the litterbox to him once (I had that in the truck), but since he wasn't eating or drinking, he declined to use it. For those worried about his not eating (because goodness knows he would wither away to nothing) - he ate last night and this morning, so is feeling better already.

Much to his delight, he is spending nights inside for a couple of days until the condition clears up. He seems to have learned that jumping the gate blocking the door to the front room will get him outside faster than anything, so he stayed in just the single gate all last night (we usually use 2 gates stacked - which he can still jump). He jumped into the room, but not out of it.

We'll know when he's ready to go back outside - he'll jump the gate at night and Tory will freak out and be sure to let me know!

Cable Trials

We have had basic cable for about 20 years. Without cable we could only get 1 station (sometimes), and that would be very snowy. We only have basic cable for 2 reasons; we don't watch that much TV, so don't need more channels or any of the movie channels, and I didn't want a "box".

Well, Comcast has decided to all but force us to get a box. They are moving all of their content above Channel 30 to digital. That includes the channels we watch (or have the TV tuned to) the most: ESPN, The Weather Channel, Spike, and NESN. We would be in better shape losing the channels below 30 - of those we only really watch 9 (for the local news) and FOX. Mind you, I don't have the option to pay less and get less channels - it is pay the same price and get less channels. Or, put another way, I need to get cable boxes in order to get everything we are paying for.

Anyway, although most of the changes aren't happening until next April, there are a couple of things happening sooner. So, with their offer to give us 1 free cable box and up to 2 DTA (Digital Transcribing Adapters) I signed up to get the boxes:  a cable box for our main TV and a DTA for the TV in the workout room (not that we use that for anything besides watching workout tapes and DVDs, but you never know).

Thursday the items arrived on the doorstep. I won't bore you with the description of the poor packaging, but I took pictures before opening anything so I could prove it wasn't our fault if the devices didn't work.

Friday when I got home from work, I set up the DTA for the TV in the workout room. That was a minimum of fuss since nothing was hooked to the TV anyway. Next I moved the TV and Stereo cabinet so I could back to the nest of wiring and attempt the hook up. For those of you that have forgotten, or never known, here is what I moved:

   Stereo cabinet (yes, the bootm shelf is filled with albums) and TV - these stand about 4.5 feet high and the cabinet is solid wood (not oak thank goodness).

So, after studying the wiring for a while (WS had put this all together - and there is another cabinet that holds 3 other pieces of equipment - so it isn't pretty back there), I unhooked everything that had to do with the TV, DVD/VCR combo and the seperate VCR that was on the bottom shelf below the TV (obviously this is an "after" photo).

WS got home during this process and I don't know whether he was more amused or more horrified that I had delved into something of this magnitude and of which he had always been in charge of. After getting the system unhooked, I removed the VCR and placed the CAble box in its place (it was that big). After about 30 minutes, I had the DVD/VCR and TV wooked up to the cable box.

That was the easy part. Next, I had to call Comcast and have them activate the boxes (the direction warn that this can take up to 45 minutes). So, I call them up and after giving my phone number to the automatic system, am directed to an associate who promptly asks for my phone number. Then, I have to give my name and address. After 45 minutes of questions (actually, about 35 minutes I was on hold), the DTA is working but the main cable box is not. Naturally, because I don't care about the DTA working - I care about the living room TV having cable!

So, the associate says she is going to transfer me to a technician. Instead, she transfers me right back to where I started from. I have to give the automated service my phone number, then I got someone asking me if I needed to set up my digital box (hard to tell, I could hardly hear her). Anyway, after literally shouting my phone #, name and address into the phone (she couldn't hear me either), I had to get across that I had already been thru the setup process, it had failed, and I was supposed to have been forwarded to a technical person.

She forwards me and I actually get a live person (still hard to hear) and she asks for my phone number, name, address and social security number. Wait - you guys don't have that. Oh, yeah, we don't have that listed here (WTF would they have SS numbers?). Anyway, after another 30 minutes spent on the phone, she gives up and arranges a visit by a tech.

Early Snow

A picture from last Sunday:

 

There is something not quite right about a show-covered grill. This is one of the earliest snows since we have lived in NH. It snowed hard all day, but didn't start sticking until that night; otherwise we probably would have ended up with several inches of the white stuff. Instead, we ended up with about 1/2" that stuck around until Tuesday morning.

The leaves just started really falling during the week. Hopefully, further snowfalls will wait until we can get those picked up.
 

News IQ

Form Mostly Cajun, I found a News IQ Test. I got 11 out of 12.

 

Moving on Up

New Hampshire's Amy Kane, of Atlantic Avenue, has a new blog address. Make sure to update your blogrolls, shortcuts or whatever.

Trip Highlights

The Friday night before leaving for Kansas, WS decided to investigate the small (very, very small) leak in the fittings from the oil tank to the line into the house. After much cussing and breaking of things (to be fair, the nut was already broken - he just broke it more), borrowing of tools and working by flashlight, he got it fixed. (have I ever mentioned that if it didn't involve breaking something or drawing blood that it isn't really a project around here?)

So, up early Saturday morning to do final packing and get the heck out of here. I took a shower then did dishes; WS was going to take hsi shower after I got done with the dishes. Well, that was the plan anyway. Instead, I announced, "we don't have any hot water." If we hadn't put in a holding tank when we replaced the boiler a couple of years ago, we would have know that the heater never recovered after the surgery to the oil line. Instead, it took emptying out the hot water from the tank to figure it out. WS called the neighbor and asked him to have his HVAC buddy take a look at it while we were gone.

So, relatively unscathed (except for the fact that WS got no shower), we headed for the airport. Apparently the run of bad luck with the heater was in lieu of having any hassles at the airport. This was actually the second time in a row that I didn't get searched. Both planes took off and landed on time and our rental car was a breeze to get.

Since we were getting in late (we had a couple of hours to drive to get to WS's family), we stayed in a motel in Salina. The next morning, heading to Dan and Deb's, we passed some interesting sights:

   A pumpkin patch maze, or a pumpkin patch and a corn maze. Don't know which, but I'm not used to seeing pumpkins grown in Kansas.

   These were so cute/funny that WS stopped the car and insisted I get pictures.

Where We Have Been

Cop Car has a pretty good synopsis of what we have been up to.

Actually, she had the reason we came to Kansas for the week, to surprise and honor HH.

We decided while we were here to see WS's family too, so we arrived Saturday night and spent some time with them before heading to Derby. We will also spend a day with others of WS's family that live in the Derby area.

Everything has gone well since we left; the only problem being that the heater quit sometime on Friday, so WS couldn't get his shower in before we left Saturday morning (we have a hot water holding tank, so didn't realize the heater was out until Saturday). Hopefully the neighbor got someone in to take care of that and we will have hot water when we get home.

You'll have to wait until I get home for pictures - I don't have picture size reduction software on the laptop. Guess I'll have to rectify that situation!

Out of Here Soon

Last night I finally turned on the heat upstairs. It has stayed in the 50's lately, and now it has been in the 40's (for daytime temps). Last night when I got home, the temperature upstairs was 61 - so I had to flip that little switch that told the furnace it was going to get busy for the season.

*****

Took my bike in last night for its 3rd servide. It has a little over 8,550 miles on it. It will be ready to pick up when we get home.

****

Today is the big gear-up for our trip. Fortunately this is my off Friday, so I have time to get my list done (go to the laundry mat, get dog food, water plants etc). We cleaned Birdie's cage and did the dump run last night, so we are all set there.

****

We won't be back from our trip until a week from Sunday. I may or may not post during that time, so don't worry if I don't blog for a while. Have a great week and play nice (now, all I have to do is follow my own advise!).

See ya on the flip side.