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!!