Once Upon A Time

I'm quite sore from yesterday's

I'm quite sore from yesterday's workout. We had a sub for the class and he had us do LOTS of squats and crunches. Plus some new exercises focussing on the obliques and the back. All that equates to very sore muscles in some odd places. The thing is I felt great while doing the exercises. I think they allowed me to funnel my pent up aggravation into something productive. I'm just impressed that I managed a set of 50 squats without taking a break!

I'm convinced I need a break from work. I'm having trouble concentrating and have the general feeling of not wanting to be there. Hopefully a long weekend will allow me to recuperate and reenergize. Maybe with a break I can manage to construct some more interesting blong entries as well, LOL.

Between being sick in September, my cat being sick and the Sniper Attacks in October, and the BS going on at work this month, I've about had enough. I'll gladly welcome my 30th birthday in 2 weeks if that will bring better times than what I've had the last 3 months. If not, perhaps I'll just hide under my covers for a few days. ;)

Got some more Christmas shopping

Got some more Christmas shopping done, though the mall was already a zoo even before Thanksgiving. Hecht's was having a big sale, so the shoe department was a nightmare. I ended up leaving there empty handed. It's kinda depressing when you spend time trying on several pairs of shoes [after waiting for the salesman to come back with each pair] and not find any that fit well. And the one pair I did like was $70 and it wasn't even boots. It turned out to be a waste of time and effort. :(

But I did get several gifts for other people which was my main goal. I've actually made good progress on my Christmas shopping so far. Yay!!!!

The wind last night howled and whipped against my roof so hard, I thought for sure it was going to tear it off, leaving me clinging to my bed covers, LOL. Thankfully, it did not.

Sirens just went past my place. There must be a fire somewhere close. Near my friend Karen's new condo, a single family home burnt down recently. The fire also did extensive damage to the house next to it, and warped the siding on two other houses, one on the other side of it and one behind it. Very devastating considering each of the houses are under a year old and in the $600,000+ range. That's the problem with having the houses built so close together. It becomes easy for a fire to spread from one house to the next.

Here's to being thankful that I continue to have a roof over my head....

What a shitty week! Thanksgiving

What a shitty week! Thanksgiving can't come soon enough. Work has continued to be stressful as everything has come to a head. I saw this coming but that didn't make it any easier. :P

The high point of my day was seeing X-rays of my feet, LOL. It appears my feet are in good shape and just need regular massage and orthodics to keep them from cramping. I'm guessing my new sneakers are part of the problem, so I need to look for another new pair. :P

And Gee's hanging in there. He's not completely normal, but better than he had been. A couple days this week he did pee outside his box and the pee was pinkish. But the last two days I have not caught him going outside the box. And he seems a bit more cheerful.

Granted I've been blathering about

Granted I've been blathering about bits and pieces of this off and on, but Caterina has summed up quite eloquently what a lot of Americans have been saying about the events of the last year. Go read what she has to say!

Courtesy of my favorite lyrics

Courtesy of my favorite lyrics webpage:

Feel me
I'm frightened
We both know
Someone waiting
Feeling my way
Don't be, enjoy
While we can't be

Feel me
I'm frightened
We both know
Don't be, enjoy
While we can't be

---Alpha, With
from the album ComeFromHeaven

Just felt right as I was listening to it. Right for the moment. Though I'm not sure just why, LOL.

This article in the Post

This article in the Post disturbed me a bit. While I do believe medication can be necessary for those who suffer from depression, and depression and stress can affect your health, I don't like the emphasis being made by drug companies to connect illnesses with depression by poorly designed small-scale studies. And in turn push their drugs.

What this article suggests is that heart attack patients (as an example) might be treated with anti-depressants prophylactically (sp?) to prevent depression. I have to wonder--do these drugs even have a prophylactic capability? And let's not forget that these drugs do have side-effects and can have other effects in combination with the other drugs that the person might be taking for their heart condition or any other illness. I just honestly don't like the idea of taking extra medicines that one might not need thereby putting that person for risk for other harmful conditions.

I see this as big pharma trying to expand their market for current drugs. In the past several years, big pharma has reduced the amount of money that they spend on researching new drugs and instead has used that money to advertize current patented drugs to the consumer as well as researching multiple uses for those drugs in order to try to expand the markets for those current drugs. In other words, increase their bottom line. Additionally the big drug companies have been gobbling each other up, making mega pharma companies and taking out their competitors in the process.

I'm all in favor of having counseling available to those that suffer a major illness. I think that is far better as a prophylactic measure for depression in these cases. However, I cannot help but notice that counseling was only mentioned briefly in the article, while anti-depressant drugs were the focus.

This morning when I walked

This morning when I walked out to my car, I found a street lamp smashed on the sidewalk within a foot of my car. It was an unsettling sight--thankfully it did not hit my car. My guess is with all the rain we had over the weekend, the ground had become very soft. The gusting wind must have swayed the pole to and fro until it finally fell over. The morons at my apartment complex didn't cement the pole into the ground and thus this was bound to happen. In this case the lamp was only maybe 3 years old.

The even better part is the same morons propped the lamp against a neighboring bush. When I came home tonight I saw the light glowing against the bush. I just hope it doesn't manage to set the bush afire. We could really do without that. LOL.

Bizarre....I found a second ljc

Bizarre....I found a second ljc on the net. Who knew? LOL.

Okay, that doesn't make sense to anyone who's not in the La Femme Nikita community from years past. The original ljc I knew ran one of the largest LFN fanpages that was major source of show intel. Unfortunately after the show ended, she closed down her Nikita site.

It's prolly not bizarre to anyone else but me. But it struck me funny, LOL. :)

Maybe I'm the one that's weird. ;)

Added: Okay...the stranger thing is both ljc's are web designers. How odd a coincidence?

I haven't updated much about

I haven't updated much about the guy from the pool hall to whom I gave my number. He did call, we did go play pool, but it wasn't what I'd call a dream date. I spent the first hour wondering where the hell he was. In the process I started having a fun time joking with the guys at the next pool table. When dude finally wandered back toward my table, I felt so disappointed. I no longer wanted him to be there.

Add to that he mumbles something like he had been sitting near the front door, he thought he saw me pass by him, but he figured I'd come back that way looking for him. After an hour he comes to look for me??? Duh! Obviously I didn't see him and that response had me reeling. As we're playing pool and I'm playing miserably, he makes some statement like, "That's because I'm using the force against you. I'm a Jedi."

I don't think he was joking. *shudder* The funniest part was one of the guys from the next table heard him and commented to me, "My son thinks he's a Jedi, too, but he's four."

By the end of the evening I knew that I felt no connection with this guy, and that I did not enjoy his company. But when he asked if maybe I'd go see a movie with him, I replied that perhaps we could. [very far from a yes] Then I suggested playing pool another time with the friend I met him with previously and with my friend Karen. That was my last ditch attempt at indicating friendship was the most I could consider with him. He didn't catch my drift.

Instead he left me two messages, practically begging me to call the second time. I haven't so far. I'm sure he's got the idea now, but I still feel like I should call him and lay it out that I'm not interested. I never wanted to be cruel, and wasn't sure how to gently reject him, but now by not calling I feel like I have in fact been cruel.

I'm awful.

But he is weird, LOL......

What a long week! I've

What a long week! I've spent it in SOP hell. Anyone who's ever had to write GLP Standard Operating Procedures will understand the feeling. In essense its an exercise in futility, LOL. You write a procedure and repeatedly rewrite and edit it to satisfy all the reviewers. And satisfying everyone is nearly impossible. Quality Assurance (QA) look at it from the standpoint of compliance and covering all the rules and regs. The department that has to perform the procedure look at it from the standpoint of making their jobs easier and having the least amount of constraints to comply with. Deviation is an evil word in their vocabulary. A word they want to avoid like the plague.

Basically SOP writing has to be precise and completely in second person. Do this. Record that. Etc. Step by Step.

In some ways it's completely different than fiction writing. It requires more structure. Even more attention to detail and word usage. And no creativity. It's about following form. Yet it's that attention to detail, that preciseness, that organization, that contributes to making me a stronger writer. [Damn, is that a run-on? ;) ] Or so I hope. LOL.

By the time I get to blogging all that attention to detail and organization goes by the wayside as I'm simply too tired to be that anal. LOL. So I either write crap or nothing at all. Or so it feels sometimes.

FTC Continues Anti-Spam Push....I'm happy

FTC Continues Anti-Spam Push....I'm happy to hear. Death to Spam!

Crossing my fingers here as

Crossing my fingers here as Gee has managed to stay normal for a week. At one point I thought we were due for a repeat performance, but I then decided to switch both cats completely to the green pea and duck diet to be certain that was not the cause. He still has bouts of itching, but I'm watching to see if those reduce in severity as he continues to eat the special food. Otherwise I have been trying to give him the Chlor-Trimetron as well. Hopefully if I can control the allergies, his bladder problems will stay in check as well.

At work, nerves are quickly becoming frayed. People are stepping on each other toes. It's almost getting ugly. And we're not even to winter yet. Scary. I can only hope this rapid decline goes in the opposite direction soon.

My brother Brian went to get new tires for the old Honda. Sears pulls some crap whereby they claim we need stuff replaced and they can't do an alignment. So we take it to the mechanic and he aligns it instead, LOL. The car is 15 years old. It's only used to go back and forth to work 3 miles each way and to the college which is not even that far. There is no point to replacing the stuff they wanted to replace. The wear in what they called the rear ball joints (which they are not really ball joints) and the side arms only causes some reduced handling of the car. The wheels won't fall off, nothing terrble will happen, and an alignment can be done. This I even got from Honda's service when I called them and explained what Sears wanted to replace (just to check to see if the car has rear ball joints). Sears was once again trying to rip off a customer. And the sad thing is my brother is an employee...for 2 more days, LOL.

At the time the young

At the time the young men from near Buffalo were arrested for potential terrorist ties, I posed the question whether this was part of a bigger movement to racial profile and isolate anyone who fit the profile of a potential terrorist much like the internment camps during WWII where men and women of Japanese descent were held. Now it is becoming clear that more was known in regards to who these men interacted with. The man that was responsible for convincing these men to go to Pakistan and later Afghanistan for 'religious' training was killed when the CIA blew up a car with terrorist leaders in Yemen. One of the young men from Buffalo was released (though under surveilance) since he did feign injury to leave the camp in Afghanistan since he was appalled at what they were being taught. Apparently the CIA was able to corroborate his story.

That is the thing about organized religion that disturbs me. Free thinking is not encouraged. You are expected to have blind faith and question nothing. And it is this kind of control that allows for the growth of hatred for those that are different, extremist thinking, and even the molestation of children, without protest. The religious leaders have the sanction of God, Allah, or whomever, to determine what is best for its followers. And this sort of control allows them to get people to do things they normally would not do....all in the name of salvation. I find this sort of thing, no matter the religion, disgusting.

Took Gee to the other

Took Gee to the other vet for second opinion and basically got the answer that there is nothing much that can be done but let the problem run its course. She called it idiotypic lower urinary tract disease. (i-LUTD) If I'm lucky it'll eventually clear up with only occasional recurrances. If I'm unlucky he'll have this problem chronically.

She also seemed to think it is likely that Tabitha's problems earlier this year were from the same condition. I was just luckier with her. This leads me, the virologist, to belive it is likely from a transmissable virus. The vet didn't mention this, but I did poke around on PubMed and a recent journal article indicated that someone had isolated a couple of calciviruses from cats with this problem. Also, I've seen mention of herpesvirus on some of the vet websites, but I'm uncertain whether scientists have actually isolated herpesvirus from cats with the problem.

The bottom line is the inflammatory response from infection with a virus is likely the cause of the problem. And without a good anti-inflammatory drug for cats at one's disposal, there's not much one can do. The Glucosamine (Cosequin) is about as close as you get to a safe anti-inflammatory drug in cats. And it is only sometimes helpful. And it takes about a month to see any effects.

I was also told to take as much stress out of his life. When I talked to her about the allergies (perhaps being a source of stress), she indicated I could try giving him Chlor-Trimetron to relieve the itchiness. Additionally we're putting him (and Tabitha) back on the Green Pea and Duck food since she feels that the UR diet or any other urinary tract health is a waste of time and money. This way if the food is what Gee's allergic to, Tabitha will be on the same diet with him and he won't accidentally get into a different kind of food. And mostly we are doing this since Gee loves the Green Pea and Duck food and we want him to eat well, and not be stressed by changing foods again.

Now I'm wondering if we can find a way to get the stress out of my life, too! LOL!

Sounds like I'll be having

Sounds like I'll be having more headaches over the next two years with the GOP taking control over the Senate and the House. *huge sigh*

Not sure what else there is to say....except Canada is a nice place to live. ;)

I called out of work

I called out of work today since I had a major headache and I'm wondering if I have a cold coming on. I figured I needed to relax. And this gave me the opportunity to take my comforter to the laundramat and read a book while I was waiting. I'm continuing to read Maeve Binchy's Light a Penny Candle.

Laundramat's can be rather interesting. You see people that you otherwise would not normally encounter. I wondered whether these were regulars or simply people who were put in the situation of having to do their clothes outside of their home. Several were mothers with young children playing amidst the laundry carts. Then there was the occasional older bachelor. And the chinese fellow who runs the place. I found him the most interesting as he was doing laundry for folks who had paid to have him do it for them. Since the change machine was out, folks would ask him for quarters to use for the washers and dryers. In my case I asked him if there was any detergent for sale since I didn't bring enough. Luckily there was a vending machine that sold such a commodity.

My comforter took quite a while to dry, but I finally got it dry enough and headed home, passing signs that read such things as 'Connie Country' and 'Vote for Connie.' I'm still torn. I like how Connie has represented us in the House, voting more as a liberal than a Republican, supporting a woman's right to choose, gay rights, and focussing on local issues. She even voted against the resolution to attack Iraq. But she still is technically a Republican whose seat could determine the control of the House. The situation just sucks. I know there are others who are also torn like me. Torn between wanting to vote for the best candidate and voting to ensure democratic control of the House. :S

Gee is still doing the

Gee is still doing the rollercoaster thing where he seems better at one moment and worse 12 hours later. And so on. I'm at the point where I really don't know what to do. It's been a whole month now since this problem started and he hasn't been well more than 3 or 4 days at a time. I'm sure my apartment smells completely of cat pee, but my allergies have been so bad I can't smell anything. I'm not sure this is a blessing in disguise or whether this is more harmful than good. I lost two bags now to him peeing/bleeding on them, one in particular I really liked. I'm at the point where I feel forced to consider giving him back to the organization I adopted him from. I just don't know what else I can do for him. *huge sigh*

I took the Purrsonality test

I took the Purrsonality test and found....

Take the Purrsonality Quiz!

*meow*

It turns out the guy

It turns out the guy I met at Buffalo Billiards did call me Friday night. And he left his number on my voicemail. However, when I tried to call back on Saturday, the phone just rings. No voicemail or answering machine....no nothing. :(

So Karen and I went to play pool again without him or his friend. This time she won two of the games. And I was pleased that I'm playing quite well given all the practice I've been getting lately. :)

Yesterday, when I was on the toilet, the phone rings. I rush to get out of the bathroom to catch the phone, with my jeans down at my ankles. I was hoping dude was calling. Instead I pick up the phone and say hello twice, am ready to put the receiver down and the recording clicks on, "Hello. This is Laura Bush and...click." Yeah, like I ran out of the bathroom to listen to some political phone ad bullshit. *I don't think so!*

I'm about ready for the election to be over and for these phone calls to cease. And if they checked my voter affiliation, I'm clearly a democrat and not going to vote for whoever they are calling about, with the exception of Connie Morella who is quite the moderate. I'm sure it was yet another Bob Ehrlich spiel...*hork.* Not that I'm a huge fan of Kennedy-Townsend, but this is not the year to cross party lines with all the bullshit Bush and his cronies have been pulling. And because of that, I'm even hesitant to vote for Morella, even knowing her record, since I'm so opposed to a Republican controlled Congress. Bush is doing enough damage as it is! I don't even want to think about what shit he'd get away with if the GOP had control over the the Senate and the House. I think I'd be popping Rolaids by the bottle if that were to happen. Heck, Xanax would be more like it, LOL! We'd all need some strong medicine to get us through it.

Swapped out a few blogs

Swapped out a few blogs on the side and edited the name of another. Trying to figure out if I screwed up the name when I put it up there or if she changed it slightly, LOL. One word can certainly alter the meaning of a phrase! Hehehehe.....If I in fact screwed it up, I feel bad about that. But there's not much else I can do but fix it either way. Off to work I go....unfortunately.

I'd say TGIF...except I have

I'd say TGIF...except I have to work tomorrow. :P

It's been a long week already. Gee is doing a bit better today, though I'm not certain if he is completely back to using his box. I haven't seen him squatting anywhere, but I have been vegging here at my puter a good bit of time. I do think he has lost some weight and am concerned he could be a bit anemic since this cystitis stuff has been happening for the past month. I may pick up some kitty vitamins at PetsMart for him.

I think I'm too tired to write much of interest....maybe tomorrow I'll have better luck, lol.

Instead I'll just continue to chill while listening to some Pink Floyd. :)