Lianhua.nu

Oscar Woes…

About a year and two months ago, we had to take one of the kitties in for surgery — Toby had a floating testicle which wasn’t removed when he was neutered the first time, so it was all kinds of troubles and making everyone in the house absolutely pissy (literally and figuratively). So, we had to have it removed.

And today, we had to take one of the kitties in for surgery again. Sigh.
Oscar had been kind of… well, constipated… for a few days, so Sean took him to the vet. The vet gave us some laxatives and told us to bring him back later for another check. Well, a day or two before we were supposed to bring him back for the checkup, we noticed there was some blood in his urine in the litter box (we have the clear crystals kind… so if anything’s different you can be sure we notice). So when Sean took him to the vet again, they did an x-ray, and apparently there are some stones in his bladder.
So Oscar is having surgery today. :(

Well, as Sarah put it, at least he’ll feel better. (Or, a more direct quote: “well…. at least they are fixing him!” So eloquent, Sarah. Hehe.)

I keep trying not to think about it, but I’m worried about him… I think he has to stay at least overnight, and possibly two nights. Poor, poor baby.

Anyway.. time to get back to work… but I’ll be blogging later… I already have my topic. Ahem.

Back in business!

Believe it or not, I’m still alive. Haha.
It has been one long week, seriously. I started my class at Purchase on Monday… It’s ‘Understanding Moral Problems,’ a class about moral philosophy. And its from 6:30p to 10p Mondays and Wednesdays. Aiya. Needless to say, I’ve been pretty much flopping down as soon as I get home and going to sleep. But the class is not too bad, and I’ve made a couple friends with whom I ride the bus and train back home, since they live in Yonkers and the Bronx themselves. Plus the professor is a pretty big cheese — but a very intelligent one, which is great. I was worried he was going to be all stuffy and strict and… scary. Not the case at all. All in all, it makes it all worthwhile.
Other than that… work, work and more work… and our friend Kimmie has been spending the evenings with us last night and the night before, watching TV, playing GameCube, etc. Fun times. :)

Somehow school sent two of my paychecks from the end of the school year back to my parents’ house last month… So I was running on absolutely no money for two pay periods… Ugh. I have a big list of things that Frankie needs, or that the kitties need, or that we need for the cruise… and I haven’t been able to get any of them because the cable bill completely depleted my account. It’s probably my fault for not setting up direct deposit when the school (finally) got it set up, but… seriously, PITA.
But it’s all good now… My mom sent me both (nicely sized) checks, as well as my refund checks from Federal and California taxes. So now my bank account is stuffed again, and I’m feeling pretty good.

Oh… I haven’t talked about the cruise here yet, have I?
Sean and I are going with Emily & Warlock on a cruise in late July/early August! We’re going on Princess Cruises, to the eastern Carribbean (Bahamas, St. Thomas, St. Maarten) for a week. I’m really excited… We’re also going to take the train down to Ft. Lauderdale (where the cruise leaves from) together, since somebody (obviously not me or Sean :P) refuses to get on a plane. Oh well. It’ll be fun to all take the train together. :)
Then, after the cruise gets back, my parents and sister are going to meet all of us over in Ft. Lauderdale, since they’ll be on Sanibel starting the day before we get back. Sean, Em & Warlock will all get on the train back to NYC, while I’m going to go over to Sanibel and spend some time with family for a week and a few days. Then I’ll fly back (on JetBlue, yay!) from Ft. Myers.
And I’ll be tan again. Yay!
I refuse to go in a tanning bed, and I’ve never had very good luck with sunless tanners… but I look and feel so great when I have a tan. I just look healthier. Not pale and sickly.
Of course, I always take the proper precautions — sunscreen all the time — so that I don’t get burnt, because a) it’s unpleasant/painful/annoying and b) skin cancer is not on my list of things to do before I die.

We’re going to go snorkeling. Yay! I love fishies and water and snorkeling (even though last time I tried I was pretty bad at breathing through the tube).
And I want to see a shark. And a manta ray. :D

Aaaanyway… As I said, I’ve been working on a list of things to buy now that I have some money back… Frankie is going to get a playpen, a wheel and a bunch of random toys… I’m getting a new swimsuit, some new casual shoes and a new messenger bag… And I might get a kitchen scale… Oh, and a bed-in-a-bag for guests… Hmmm…

Tangled.

So what happens when WordPress plugins fail?
Jess gets over a thousand spam comments caught in the moderation queue, instead of in the actual spam catchers in place to stop them. Siiiiigh.
For some reason, Akismet just stopped working about three days ago. The first day, I thought it was just a hiccup. The second day, I started to get a little annoyed, but still had faith in it. Yesterday, I got angry, and I went into action. So now, I have Akismet (which has decided to work), Spam Karma 2 and Bad Behavior all running simultaneously. Let’s see a spam comment get through that.

In addition to that, my FAlbum plugin, that displayed all of my Flickr photos in a cute little gallery and let me randomize them and put them up at the top of the page, decided to crap out as well. I still haven’t figured out what’s going on with that one, but it’s about 8 hours away from being replaced. (I say 8 hours because I’m not going to sit here at work and do it, and I think I’m going to the gym after work.) I haven’t decided what I’ll use yet, but I’ve been looking at the FlickrRSS plugin that Sarah’s been using on onelotus.

In other news… I moved Surnaturelle over to a VPS, still on NSWH’s server of course. My brother, who had proprietorship, decided that he wanted to merge it with another hosting company, as it was starting to get a bit too big for NSWH to handle on their own with their resources and manpower. I don’t know much more than that, but he and I agreed it’d be better for me to get my stake on the server claimed now before prices change, if they do. So, I have a VPS. He’s going to help me out with some of the general server functionality, since I don’t even claim to know what I’m doing in Linux, and help me keep things running in general. It’s more expensive now, but… I think I can manage.
The move was smooth, thankfully. It did happen to reset my mail server settings, which I had changed over to GMail on a couple of domains, but it was no big deal getting them back to normal, and it gave me the initiative I needed to get the email piping set up for the Surnaturelle Support System, which wasn’t going to work through GMail.

Anyway, enough of the technobabble.

I feel like overhauling Lianhua… but then again, I don’t. I don’t know. Sigh.

I bought a fleece tube and hammock set from Fuzz Butt Chins for Frankie the other day, and it arrived today… I installed them both in his cage earlier tonight. He’s already taken to bringing his chews into the tube and sitting in it to eat them… but I think he misses being able to sit in the corner and watch me at night. His cage is about 3 feet from my pillow, and he liked to sit in the corner and watch me, or try to chew through the bars to get to me. Buuut I put the tube in that corner… and just a few minutes ago I heard him rattling around in there, looked over and he was trying to wedge himself under the tube to get into the corner. Poor baby… I don’t know where else to put it, though, without some major overhauling of his cage…

Aiya… I don’t really have much to say tonight. Not much has been going on… we’re just kind of chugging along, dealing with work, starting class at Purchase next week… *shrugs* Maybe I’ll think of something to say tomorrow… It is getting kind of late tonight to be thinking.

Sean is asleep next to me, and he just turned over and smiled in his sleep. I love that boy so much…