Raids in Minneapolis

I am glad to know that the police (only here to protect and serve the citizens) are diligently protecting free speech and our 4th amendment rights in Minneapolis.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/30/police_raids/index.html

Hurricane Gustav

I was just reading a yahoo article about the hurricane and how everyone has to evacuate and board up their residences and businesses. I felt like, in the midst of all this chaos and dishevel, these two paragraphs didn't quite fit.....

"Lidia Morral and her husband were visiting Cuba from Barcelona, Spain. She said Gustav forced officials to close the beaches the couple wanted to visit in Santiago, on the island's eastern tip earlier in the week. The storm also prevented them from catching a ferry from Havana to the Isla de la Juventud on Saturday.
"It's been following us all over Cuba, ruining our vacation," said Morral, who was in line at a travel agency, trying to make other plans. "They have closed everything, hotels, restaurants, bars, museums. There's not much to do but wait."

Oh! These poor folks ....how this has affected THEM so much!

Louie's rough couple weeks

Well, it had to happen. Louie is getting up there in years, and his breath has been getting progressively worse lately, so it was time for a dental cleaning. What really got my butt in gear was what looked like an abscessed canine tooth. Well, my clinic is emergency only, so it doesn't have dental x-rays, nor do we have a drill for removing teeth, so I had to get help from a local clinic in the area.

First things first - we got his vaccines up to date and had an exam at the clinic. Guess what his vet mommie hadn't heard? LOUIE HAS A HEART MURMUR...a small one, but it was there nonetheless. The vet and I discussed getting some x-rays of his chest - so I did. However, I did one better. I got him in to see Jack and my friend Katie, who just happens to be a Veterinary Cardiologist. She did an ultrasound of his heart and assured me that everything is just fine - just a mild flow murmur. Whew!! Here's a picture of her (about 7 months pregnant ;) with Louie just after the good news.

So, it was time to put him under anesthesia and get this dental thing done. Now, should be no big deal, right? However, I AM a vet and I DO overthink EVERYTHING, (I think knowing the risks is worse than having no idea) so I'm worried sick about my baby going under anesthesia.

In the end, his dental cleaning went well and he had three teeth extracted - two incisors in front bottom and one very back molar. His canine tooth turned out to be fine. He woke up from anesthesia just fine.

HOWEVER, he started bleeding from that back molar space around 8pm that night. I thought it had slowed down by the time we went to bed, so I hoped it would just clot and stop on its own. We laid him down on something to catch the few drips we thought we coming...here's a pic of that. Sorry Kirk.

Oh, was I wrong about the bleeding slowing down! We woke up at 3:30am to Louie vomiting a huge pile of blood on the bedroom floor. OMG! The bleeding hadn't slowed at all, he was just swallowing it! So, we got up and made a run to Walgreen's for cleaning supplies. WOW - Oxyclean really works! You would never know a murder scene took place in our bedroom. I took him outside and he vomited another huge pile on the stairs to the apt building. No pics of the vomit - although Jack wanted to! - sorry all.

Poor Lou :( The dripping never stopped and continued in to the next morning.

So I had to take him in to MY clinic Wednesday morning and RE-anesthetize him - which did NOT go as smoothly as it did the day before. Louie is not a good anesthetic patient, let me just say and there is a reason doctors are not allowed to practice on their own family. I should not have been the one anesthetizing him. A colleague of mine took over shortly after the first time I was unsuccessful in getting him down. In all, he tried to wake up TWICE during the procedure. There were times when I was freakin' out, BIG TIME, like almost crying. He regurgitated a bunch of blood from his stomach and he ended up with some blood in his tracheal tube - meaning he got blood in his lungs during the procedure. Hopefully it will resorb and not be a problem, but inhaling anything during anesthesia is the reason docs don't allow you to eat anything for 12 hours before. It can cause aspiration pneumonia, which is bad and takes a long time to clear up, and can be fatal. So I'm putting him on an additional antibiotic and watching/waiting/hoping he is fine.

It turned out the bleeding was coming from a small artery on the side of the opening. I couldn't quite grab it, but packed it with gel foam and another clotting type packing before re-suturing it.

No bleeding since. And Louie is happy to be home, albeit probaby pretty sore from the whole thing. He kinda whines while he's laying there now which, as you can imagine, is the most pathetic thing in the world :( Our poor Lou, he went through so much and I'm just so relieved and thankful he is okay. We just had to tell everyone about it. It was obviously a huge big deal to us and we thought everyone would want to know that Lou's a little down now - but at least he's recovering and safe at home!

Deer update... melanistic deer with regular baby

how cute!

If you have done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to fear.

I heard this phrase uttered by an Austin policeman on the radio yesterday and it made me so angry. I hate that phrase with a passion.

The government uses it to justify laws like this or spying like this which inetivitably lead to incidents like this or this or this. I could go on all day (but Rx has warned me against that, so I will keep it short).

This is a version of the very popular “The innocent have nothing to fear” argument, which is wheeled out whenever authorities wish to bring in new measures which increase surveillance or limit freedoms in the name of increasing security. For example, someone demands to search your luggage. You object to this intrusion on your privacy, but you are told that if you are innocent, you have no reason to object. After all, what are you trying to hide?
The argument is a particular species of false dichotomy. You are presented with a simple either/or choice. Either you’re guilty, and so should be exposed; or you are innocent, in which case nothing will be exposed, and so you have nothing to worry about. Either way, you have no legitimate reason to be concerned. Like all false dichotomies, the problem is that there is at least one more option than the two offered in the either/or choice. -Julian Baggini

Here are a couple of good retorts to say if someone ever says that phrase to you to justify an intrusion on your privacy...
"Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition"
"If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me."
"Isn't that what Stalin used to say?"
"Is that feeling you get when a policeman is following you on the road a pleasant one? If the government never abused its power then it would be."

Bunnyshark

my first movie... (you can bet there will be more)

Cleaning out the memory card...

This is the fat gecko on our apt wall. It stays under the light all night and just eats bug after bug. There is no shortage of bugs here in Texas. This is a beautiful picture Rx took of a beautiful flower . I think we are going to frame it. It is so alien, yet so stunningly gorgeous.
Here is another nice one, a little more familiar, but nevertheless pulchritudinous.
Nothing much else new...bunny is still unamused...
and lazy...
Priscilla is still fat...

New House!!!!!!!

We have a new house! (okay, we didn't buy it, but in Austin renting a home, or "leasing" as they say, takes about as much effort as buying one. Good ones turn over the same day they are on the market practically.). We really needed more space with the baby and all. Baby accoutrement in our current tiny apt would be ridiculous.

We took some pics of the new place:

We will have a blue Kitchen (I was really excited about the color I thought it was beautiful..Roxanne was just excited about the space. We always seem to be running into each other in the coffin sized kitchen we have now.) Off the Kitchen is the great room; complete with fireplace (a real necessity down here in the 5th circle of hell). Seriously though, you can't NOT get a place in Austin with a fireplace it is ridiculous. No one ever uses them, and they take up wall space, but I digress. The mantle will be a great place for my 1987 Coal Miners' Days Frog Jumping Contest trophy (send that one down mom).I don't have a good picture of our bedroom to show, but take my word for it, it is HUGE!!! like 2 times the size of our current one. Lets put it this way, after we put in our huge bed and Ikea bedroom set in there we will have room for the Metro and a good part of the Civic. But alas we wont need to do that because we have a Garage!! Here I am measuring the W/D space in the awesome 2 car garage! Finally somewhere to do my woodworking!Garden Tub (great for bathing and growing vegetables)
Double Vanity! This will be a time saver in the morning! We gained a second bathroom too with this house (it just gets better and better).

Here is the side porch, finally a place to grill! We cant grill in our apt, and it is killing us! In Madison we grilled every other day in the 2-3 weeks of summer we got.

We are both excited about the yard (complete with tree house!!!) Hell yeah! Lou is gonna love it (the yard not the tree house). I am painting my "No Girls Allowed" sign as I am writing this.

Roxanne is already busy planning what to do with the baby room, and we still have a spare bedroom (in addition to the baby room) in case anyone wants to come visit. In describing the new house it really made me realize how much I dislike this tiny apt we are in now. We are so excited to move into our big boy house!!

Interesting Spam

A Christian take on the old Nigerian (or 419) scam. I am sure the author of this upholds Christian morals just like G.W. Bush or Ralph Reed.

Dear Beloved In Christ,

I BRING YOU CALVARY GREETINGS! I am Mrs judith robert from Cape Verde, I am married to Mr. David robert , I and my late husband was into, Estate management and also a Government Estate Building Contractor before my husband death on January 25 2007. We were married for eleven years without a child due to my fibriod problem. He died after a brief illness that lasted for only four days.Before his death we were both born again Christian. Since my husband death I have been diagnosed with esophageal cancer . When my late husband was alive we deposited the sum of $3.8Million (USD) dollars in a security company.Presently the money is still in the security company. Recently, my Doctor told me that I would not last for the next Four months due to cancer problem. From all indications, my condition is really deteriorating and is quite obvious that I may not live more than two months, because the cancer stage has gotten to a very dangerous stage . Having known my condition I decided to donate this fund to good person that will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct herein. I want to you use at last 80% this fund for orphanages, widows and and also propagating the word of God and to endeavor that the house of God is maintained and take the remaining 20% to take good care of your good God Given Home. l took this decision because I don't have any child that will inherit this money . This is why I am taking this decision to donate this fund for charity. I am not afraid of death hence I know were I am going. I know that I am going to be in the bosom of the Lord.Exodus 14 VS 14 says that "the lord will fight my case and I shall hold my peace". I don't need any telephone communication in this regard because of my health .My happiness is that I lived a life of a worthy Christian. Whoever that Wants to serve the Lord must serve him in spirit and Truth, always be prayerful all through your life. Write to me on the this email address immediately and any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing another good person, for this same purpose.Assure me that you will act accordingly as I Stated herein. Hoping to receive your response immedaitely.Thanks and Remain blessed in the Lord.l remain yours sister in Christ.Mrs judith robert

Some interesting data I lifted from the Georgia Consumer website:

According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, the Nigerian scams accounted for the highest losses per incident of any reported Internet-related financial crime in 2005 with an average loss of $5,000, a surge of 60 percent per incident over the rate in 2004.
A Dutch private investigation firm which has studied the problem for a decade estimates that U.S. companies and individuals lost $720 million dollars in 2005. Consumers in the United Kingdom lost $520 million. Nigerian scam losses from 37 countries in 2005 approached $3.2 billion dollars.
Of the Nigerian scam criminals who could be traced, 71% lived in the U.S. Nigeria accounted for the next highest portion, 7.9%.
These scams are also referred to as "419 scams", after the Nigerian penal code addressing fraud.

Update: Just got this one 2 minutes ago...

FROM MISS MARY ADAMS
IVORY COAST WEST AFRICA
DEAREST ONE

I AM MISS MARY ADAMS FROM IVORY COAST AND I AM CONTACTING YOU BECAUSE I NEED YOUR HELP IN THE MANAGEMENT OF A SUM OF MONEY THAT MY DEAD FATHER LEFT FOR ME BEFORE HE DIED.THIS MONEY IS USD 7.8 MILLION AMERICAN DOLLARS AND THE MONEY IS IN A PRIVATE BANK HERE IN ABIDJAN. MY FATHER WAS A VERY RICH COCOA FARMER AND HE WAS POISONED BY HIS BUSINESS COLLEAGUES AND NOW I WANT YOU TO STAND AS MY GUIDIAN AND APPOINTED BENEFICIARY AND RECEIVE THE MONEY IN YOUR COUNTRY SINCE I AM ONLY 21 YEARS AND WITHOUT MOTHER OR FATHER. PLEASE I WILL LIKE YOU TO REPLY TO THIS EMAIL SO THAT I WILL TELL YOU ALL THE INFORMATION SO THAT THIS MONEY WILL BE TRANSFERRED TO YOU SO THAT YOU WILL GET ME PAPERS TO TRAVEL TO YOUR COUNTRY TO CONTINUE MY EDUCATION THERE.WAITING FOR YOUR URGENT RESPONSE.
FROM MISS MARY ADAMS

daddy long legs

We took this video at Enchanted Rock last year. At first we thought the rock had an armpit... then it started moving...

He did it again...

I am utterly impressed and dumbfounded (again) after watching the latest Bill Moyers Journal. I was blown away at the insight into 21st century America and how we got to where we are today. I am speechless (but I can still write so I will.) It was an hour long interview with Andrew Bacevich (author and prof at Boston Univ.). He discussed themes in his new book "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism." He covered so many topics I want to include the whole transcripts in this blog post, but alas I cannot, I will include this poignant exerp (see below) the whole transcript can be read here if you have the time and inclination please do. I dont know if you can watch the show again, but if you can for God's sake do it! This show is pure gold.

BILL MOYERS: I was in the White House, back in the early 60s, and I've been a White House watcher ever since. And I have never come across a more distilled essence of the evolution of the presidency than in just one paragraph in your book.
You say, "Beginning with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960, "the occupant of the White House has become a combination of demigod, father figure and, inevitably, the betrayer of inflated hopes. Pope. Pop star. Scold. Scapegoat. Crisis manager. Commander in Chief. Agenda settler. Moral philosopher. Interpreter of the nation's charisma. Object of veneration. And the butt of jokes. All rolled into one." I would say you nailed the modern presidency.
ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, and the - I think the troubling part is, because of this preoccupation with, fascination with, the presidency, the President has become what we have instead of genuine politics. Instead of genuine democracy.
We look to the President, to the next President. You know, we know that the current President's a failure and a disappoint - we look to the next President to fix things. And, of course, as long as we have this expectation that the next President is going to fix things then, of course, that lifts all responsibility from me to fix things.
One of the real problems with the imperial presidency, I think, is that it has hollowed out our politics. And, in many respects, has made our democracy a false one. We're going through the motions of a democratic political system. But the fabric of democracy, I think, really has worn very thin.

BILL MOYERS: Here is what I take to be the core of your analysis of our political crisis. You write, "The United States has become a de facto one party state. With the legislative branch permanently controlled by an incumbent's party. And every President exploiting his role as Commander in Chief to expand on the imperial prerogatives of his office."
ANDREW BACEVICH: One of the great lies about American politics is that Democrats genuinely subscribe to a set of core convictions that make Democrats different from Republicans. And the same thing, of course, applies to the other party. It's not true. I happen to define myself as a conservative.
Well, what do conservatives say they stand for? Well, conservatives say they stand for balanced budgets. Small government. The so called traditional values.
Well, when you look back over the past 30 or so years, since the rise of Ronald Reagan, which we, in many respects, has been a conservative era in American politics, well, did we get small government?
Do we get balanced budgets? Do we get serious as opposed to simply rhetorical attention to traditional social values? The answer's no. Because all of that really has simply been part of a package of tactics that Republicans have employed to get elected and to - and then to stay in office.
BILL MOYERS: And, yet, you say that the prime example of political dysfunction today is the Democratic Party in relation to Iraq.
ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, I may be a conservative, but I can assure you that, in November of 2006, I voted for every Democrat I could possibly come close to. And I did because the Democratic Party, speaking with one voice, at that time, said that, "Elect us. Give us power in the Congress, and we will end the Iraq War."
And the American people, at that point, adamantly tired of this war, gave power to the Democrats in Congress. And they absolutely, totally, completely failed to follow through on their commitment. Now, there was a lot of posturing. But, really, the record of the Democratic Congress over the past two years has been - one in which, substantively, all they have done is to appropriate the additional money that enables President Bush to continue that war.
BILL MOYERS: And you say the promises of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi prove to be empty. Reid and Pelosi's commitment to forcing a change in policy took a backseat to their concern to protect the Democratic majority.
ANDREW BACEVICH: Could anybody disagree with that?

Pure Awesome

We had a 12 week ultrasound at the Doc's office today. It was so awesome, words cannot describe how cool it was to see our baby all floppin around and waving to us. Just look at that cute button nose!! We got to see all the limbs and fingers and heartbeat! It was certainly one of the best days of our lives. JB

Aahhh The Onion...

I love robot stories...



Pentagon's Unmanned Spokesdrone Completes First Press Conference Mission



In The Know: Are We Giving The Robots That Run Our Society Too Much Power?

Bill Moyer's Journal

I am just going to come right out and say it: I love Bill Moyers. I recently started watching Bill Moyers Journal on PBS and I am kicking myself for not have ever watched it all these years. I have only seen a handful of shows and I can already easily say it is hands down the most informative, important, well done show on television period. Every show I have seen has been nothing less than enlightening.

The last show addressed the business of poverty: payday loans, JD byrider, hospital debt collectors etc, the economy in general, the offshore drilling debate. Concerning the offshore drilling thing, I was unsurprised to learn that it will take 10 years to reap anything, at best meet 0.2% of our oil needs and have zero effect on gas prices now... So why are McCain and Obama still even discussing this as a point of contention?, because the media wont do its job which is pointing out the idiocy of this whole thing to the people... Well Bill Moyers did it.

Here are some quotes from the last show concerning the economy:

I am lifting these directly from the website I hope they dont mind (I doubt they will since I am in essence advertising for them).

Okay...They are all discussing how Walmarts recently told its managers to vote and promote Republican candidates because they are less likely to support unions which would be bad for business.. Bill Moyers (playing devil's advocate) said this: "Every time guys like you talk like this.. people like the wall street journal would say, 'You're fighting a class war.'"

Bob Herbert: “The class war is over, and we lost... Over the past 30 years or so, Americans’ wages have remained relatively flat. But women went into the workplace, wives and mothers started working. People started putting things on their credit cards. There was a stock market bubble there for a while. We had a housing bubble. People refinanced and stuff. Now, they’re coming up against a wall. They’re not finding a way now to get some extra money to power the consumer economy.”

Wow! you wont hear honest clear cut commentary like that on the evening news chronicling the Olympics, the latest missing co-ed or Brangelina's twins.

Here is another awesome nugget from another commentator, Dean Baker concerning the sub prime mess etc. :

“All the people who should have been looking out the last six, seven, eight years are all going ‘oh, well, who could have known? Who could have known?’ And they’ll put Alan Greenspan here on a pedestal, because he’s [saying that] he had no idea this was going on. You had to try not to know this was going on. Certainly, someone like Alan Greenspan, our reserve board chair, had all the data I have times a thousand. He absolutely knew what was going on. And he was doing his best to look the other way because you had a lot of big interests who were making a lot of money.”

Public officials deliberately failed to protect ordinary Americans... where is the outrage?... a better question is what can we do with the outrage?... this I sadly cannot answer, but blogging is a good, yet probably ultimately ineffective outlet.

Give this show a watch, I will admit it seems boring on the outset, but it is awesome.

Black Deer

Austin is overrun with deer. When Roxanne and I go for walks at dusk we ALWAYS see deer, sometimes 1 or 2 sometimes 20-30. Louie enjoys stalking them and then charging to scare them, although the last time he did this the deer held his ground and stomped his feet at Louie...Louie became confused at that point.
Anyway, our friends Mark and Kelly have even more deer in their neighborhood. Anytime of the day or night there could be anywhere from 1/2 a deer to 10 deer in their yard (yes they actually found 1/2 a deer in their yard one day, but that is a whole other story). The deer I like the best (other than the 1/2 deer) is the black deer. I have lived around and hunted deer for my whole life and I have never seen a black white tailed deer. It is kind of shiny too.. it looks like it rolled around in grease or shoe polish.

Here is a regular whitetail (and a white dog) for comparison.
Black deer evidently has a non-black baby. weird

UPDATE: Evidently... they are called melanistic deer as they overproduce Melanin. They are very rare indeed, although more common in Texas according to this informative article.

Wow, how the baby is growing! We had our 3 months check up today (well, "11 weeks and change" according to the doctor). We got to hear the baby's heart beat on doppler. It was an exciting moment for us. HR 160 just like it should be. I took this picture last night and measured him/her....right on track at 5.1 cm!


I think I just might have a baby growing in my belly!

Good times...

We got lazy for the final Madison post.... here goes:








We are pretty sure we just found a house to move into... stay tuned for more details...

Mad Food

One of the things we missed most about Madison was the food. On the way to Madison we got hungry and bought a cheese curd sausage conglomerate thing at the Pine Cone in Johnson Creek. I dont know if it gets more Wisconsin than curds and sausage in a plastic sealed bag (maybe if it came with a bottle of Schlitz).

When we got to Madtown we went to Kabul on state street. It was delish!
Kabul is great although something about their logo seems a little racist or maybe just odd.Throughout the weekend we hit many of our other favorite haunts. Taj of course, our favorite Indian place, Monty's Blue Plate, Hacienda, Great Dane, and Mark and Carol's house for some grilled goodness.



At the Big 10 we got our fill of fried cheese curds I included this one also because it is a very flattering picture of David.

At the terrace we got some orange custard chocolate chip ice cream.. It was awesome!!

We missed the big farmer's market on the Cap square, but made it out to the North Side Farmer's Market and enjoyed fresh strawberries, donuts, and corn.
Here are the ladies shuckin corn for grillin @ Mark and Carol's
Good times... I am hungry now.. damn!

Mendota memories

We just got back from a great trip to Wisconsin. It has been almost 11 months since we left! Wow how time has flown. It was so great to see all our friends again, by the end of the trip we were certainly questioning why we ever left. We miss everybody more than ever now. We certainly feel very blessed to have all of our Madison friends.

Instead of making a mega-post with all our ~150 pics of the trip, we decided that we would make a few vignette posts about different activities over the weekend and spread them out over the next week or so, not necessarily in chronological (or regular logical for that matter) order.


On Sunday we decided a fun activity was in order so we headed down to the Union Terrace for a little canoeing action. Surprisingly, in our 6 years in Madison we had never ventured on to Mendota in a canoe, even though it is convenient and cheap.


Here I am all ready to go waiting for the tide to come in and take us out.
The canoe seemed stable enough at this point (on land), but when we first got in the water it was a little tippier than other canoes I have been in (this is foreshadowing).

Matt and Jessica came with their trusty Kayak.

Soon Mark, Carol and Kirk came and slipped their canoes into the slightly green water.
We then proceeded to join up with the other members of our canoe crew Dave and Marta (for a parallel account of events please check out their post on our sister blog)

We headed east to meet D & M as they were struggling against a good headwind. After getting almost to James Madison Park (in the background of the pic below) we spotted their little red canoe about 200+ yards from shore.. we headed out to meet them.

Merriment was had upon our meeting, but almost as soon as we turned around into the headwind in the middle of the lake we noticed things were getting a little bumpy. The calm Union Terrace waters were no more and we were popping up and down on some big waves... The aluminum bottom of out boat was smacking on the bottom of the water in between waves and we would occasionally get sprayed.... at this point all I wanted was to head in to shore.

We looked over and saw that the kayak and 2 canoes hanging out.. we looked again and the Kirk/Carol/Mark canoe was overturned in the water... As soon as we verbalized this to eachother we too were overcome by a rouge wave and overturned in the water... Dave and Marta (the only canoe afloat) came to assist us while Matt and Jessica offered moral support to the other 3 in the water.

We were in the water for like 5 minutes tops struggling to get back into the canoe when we noticed a boat coming to assist us. Evidently we had overturned directly in front of the UW rescue boat tower (lucky us). We found out later that the elegance and grace of our overturning drew applause from the people in the tower. We were happy to see them for certain. No more struggling to get back into a waterlogged canoe!

They picked us up first... we had our camera in a dry bag and for posterity's sake Roxanne photographed the second rescue. I think with some effort we may have been both been able to get back into ours as it didnt turn fully over, but I think Mark Carol and Kirk had little chance of righting their vessel, as it was completely submerged.

Below, Mark is seen handling the rescue pole.

They got us all on board and offered to relaunch our canoes for us or take us back, we opted for the latter option. We had all the canoeing we needed for that day.

Back on shore we ate a couple of brats and laughed about the whole thing.

There was only 1 casualty a chunk of my toenail came off as I was thrown from the canoe..and alas a chunk of my pride too.