Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

Red and Jasper

Originally uploaded by addlepated

Have I introduced you to Red yet?

Red is Jasper’s littermate. How we came about him was this:

When we were out of town and had the cats boarding at the vet, Jasper developed a cough. The vet x-rayed his chest to make sure his lungs were clear and discovered that he had an enlarged heart. I took him to a veterinary cardiologist for a sonogram and she confirmed it.

Diagnosis: Possible early stage dilatative cardiomyopathy.

If you remember, Jasper came here to live after we lost Icey to a nasty battle with leukemia.

I called Jasper’s breeder and she was really upset about the diagnosis. Because of the cost we’d incurred with vet bills, and because she really liked the girls when we came to get Jasper, and because Red had a kink in his tail and couldn’t be a show cat, she wanted us to take him home with us. So we did, on a trial basis.

Red’s first few days at our house were not great. He was really freaked out and hid inside of the box spring about 23.75 hours of the day. But over time, he got happy (Feliway dispenser helped a lot) and now he’s a full-fledged member of the household. He plays fetch. A lot. And attacks my daughter’s pink poodle toy and carries it around the house, howling like a mighty warrior, and drops the nasty wet thing on my head while I sleep. Oh thanks. A gift.

Jasper still has an enlarged heart and we’ve started a beta blocker in the hopes that it will control or reverse it. Still not sure what this means in the long run, other than another cardiologist visit in six months. But he’s a happy boy who likes pats on the haunches and he pounces on people as they walk by the back of the armchairs in the living room. And for now, I’m just enjoying him.

After three years of the original iPhone, we upgraded to the iPhone 4. My take? It’s lovely – quick, responsive, solid-feeling, and a pleasure to work with.

Do I have the signal strength issue? Yes, I do. And it’s more than cosmetic; a 3G speed test is 10 kbps down/1 kbps up/27414 ms ping when I lay a finger across the little black stripe on the lower left corner. When I remove my finger, it’s 1409/1265/293.

For now, I don’t notice the issue because I have a case on it. I had been considering moving to screen protectors though. I think that’s off the table for the moment.

Is it worth it? Well, with the new phones, we switched from T-Mobile to AT&T. And there’s been a noticeable difference there so far: less dead spots, like the one that was in my office; the ability to use data on Mopac; heck, the existence of 3G. And it’s just so darned much faster than our 2G iPhones. Plus, I took video the other day that just blew away the video quality from my Canon camera. So yes, worth it.

I have completely revamped my portfolio to be much snazzier and awesome and it is now located at DeeCook.com.

In addition, I’ve been totally remiss in not mentioning my partnership with two of ARGdom’s leading lights, Michelle Senderhauf (a.k.a. Varin) and Marie Lamb (a.k.a. Gupfee), in the formation of Dog Tale Media LLC, a new transmedia house. We’re very excited about our venture and think we’ve got some great stuff in store, so stay tuned.

Last summer I was totally and horribly addicted to Harper’s Island (warning, spoilery Wiki article), this terrible schlocky murder mystery show where a character got bumped off every week. I mean, really addicted. To the point where I was a total spoiler hound and went to try to find bits of the Canadian broadcast which aired a couple of days before the US one did and then when the finale aired, we were down in South Texas and actually went to a REST STOP that has WiFi to see if we could get the damned episodes (we couldn’t).

So there was this one very very emotional scene when one (well, two) of the characters died to the song Letters from the Sky by Civil Twilight. (Here’s the scene, if you want to see it – spoilers, duh.) And I was so caught up in the moment that I went and bought the song and rated it high in my mp3 library and played it over and over for a couple of weeks.

And promptly went and forgot about the whole thing.

So in the last several days, Letters from the Sky has been getting a ton of airplay on the local alt radio station, and I would get all tingly and adrenalined and couldn’t figure out what was up. Finally tonight, I heard it again and started shouting, “That song — television show? People running? Something big happened? What WAS IT!!” and went and looked it up on my phone and realized what it was.

Isn’t it funny how wrapped up in Harper’s Island I was last summer, and this year I couldn’t even remember the character’s names or who died when? How fickle I am.