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November 3, 2003

It’s The Hap Happiest Season Of All

Haloween Pumpkin I love Halloween. Ever since I can remember, it’s been my favorite time of the year and if I had to pin it down as to why I love this season so much, I’d have to say it’s because of the drama. Everyone dresses up, or at least accepts those that do. Name one other time of the year where you can show up at work dressed as Spongebob Squarepants, or a vampire, or a Rockette! OK, maybe Mardi Gras, but that’s not as universal of a holiday as Halloween.

One of my favorite authors as a kid was Ray Bradbury. I fell in love with his non-technical imagery. His science fiction is more organic and when I was young, I found it easier to sink my teeth into than say Isaac Asimov After reading the The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes, I stumbled on a book that he wrote that was completely blew me away. It was called The Halloween Tree and oh what a book it was.

October 26, 2003

Monkey Is On The Mend

Siamese Cat Looking In A Mirror Just thought I’d give a quick update on the state of Monkey’s health. For those of you that haven’t been following, our cat monkey has been sick. I’m happy to report however, that he has rounded the corner and everything is looking great!

Earlier this week we took Monkey to the vet for some more blood work. The purpose of the tests were to see if the his liver levels had lowered to the point of being normal. When we admitted him to the hospital, many of his numbers were in the 1000 range, when they should have been in the 150 range. His last test showed that all of his liver levels were back to normal. Woo hoo!

October 23, 2003

Pleasantly Confused

I have a habit of pushing things that I like onto my friends, family and basically anyone who will listen. When I first fell in love with the Franklin Day Planner I extolled it’s virtues till I was blue in the face. Later came the PalmPilot and I’ve been carrying on about that awesome device since 1997! My most recent ‘favorite thing to talk about’ has been Movable Type and creating your own weblog. Well, my buddy Dan finally yielded and created his own.

October 20, 2003

Are You Ready For A Revolution?

My Ticket To Matrix Revolutions In IMAX Some people may not like the fact that they are older when they have a birthday, but when you receive 3 tickets to The Matrix Reloaded at the local IMAX theatre for the opening night, it’s hard not to like your birthday! Of course I don’t mind getting older, so birthdays are always fun, but this one was extra sweet.

In addition to the tickets to the The Matrix, I also received the The Matrix Reloaded DVD as well as some great clothes, cigars, money and a gift card to Barnes & Noble (which I desperately needed). Although all the clothes that I received are great, one of the standouts was a T-Shirt that Holly got me. It’s a special Tour de France official 100th anniversary T-Shirt. It’s very, very cool.

October 7, 2003

Monkey Is Home!

Monkey In Profile On Saturday afternoon, Holly and I went to the vet and picked up Monkey from the hospital. He had been there since Monday, so we were quite happy when we heard the news that we could bring our baby home. However, just because he’s home doesn’t mean he’s out of the woods just yet. His liver is beginning to respond to the treatment and that’s great news, but we still have a long way to go.

With his feeding tube still in place, we have been feeding him every 4 hours by injecting his food directly into his stomach with a syringe. The food is called A/D and it’s a canned food that you can only get from your vet. We mix it with water and then draw it into the syringe. In the morning we have to add antibiotics and supplements into the food. At night, we add just the antibiotics. The vet originally said that we had to do the feedings 4 times a day, but given the amounts of food that we have to give him, it’s worked out to 6 times a day and sometimes as many as 8. It seems every time I turn around, it’s time to give Monkey more food. 😛

September 30, 2003

An Update On Monkey

We took Monkey back to the vet yesterday and it’s not great news Monkey did not respond to the treatments that we were giving him over the weekend. His blood work showed that his liver was doing worse. So the next step was to leave him there at the hospital and let them take over the treatment.

September 28, 2003

Holly Needs Her Own TV Show

Holly is the choir director for the youth choir at St. Edwards Catholic Church and they had their first performance yesterday at 5:30pm mass. She had 21 kids, which is her largest group yet, and they sang a modified version of Alan Jackson’s hit Little Bitty. It was absolutely adorable and the entire congregation loved it.

September 27, 2003

Home Care For Monkey

Monkey On The Couch With Holly This has been a tough week for Holly and I because of our 3rd cat Monkey. We noticed that he had been losing weight and we thought that was great because we’ve been trying to slim all of our cats down. However, in Monkey’s case, we found that he lost too much weight too fast. None of the other cats appeared to have lost more than a pound over the last few months, but Monkey appeared to have lost more than 5. We were obviously concerned, so we took Monkey to the vet on Wednesday to have him checked out.
My wife Holly has a very soft heart for people, animals and even plants, so Monkey’s condition already had her worried and on the verge of tears. The vet did some blood work, but scheduled an ultrasound for the next day. The doctor’s initial prognosis was that Monkey could be dealing with something called Feline Hepatic Lipidosis, otherwise known as Fatty Liver Disease. However, there could also be cancer in his liver as well, so the ultrasound and maybe even a biopsy might tell us more. In the meantime, they gave him an appetite stimulant and injected fluid under his skin to make sure he was hydrated.

September 10, 2003

We Need A Bigger Bed

It’s a miracle, but Gracie slept in the bed with us the whole night! This is the first time we’ve gone the entire night without Gracie starting a ruckus with the cats, so clearly we’re making progress. Plus, I have some new photos.

September 6, 2003

Holly’s Rockin’ The HISzzzhouse

As mentioned in Wednesday’s post, my wife Holly performed for the first time at Bellevue Community Church for their yearly Vision Night. Vision night is similar to their mid-week service except that the topic is on the Church itself. Dr. David Foster talked about the vision of BCC, where they’ve come from and where they are going, that sort of thing. Even though he was referring to where BCC is headed, as usual he also gave me a lot to think about my life as well. 🙂

The music is always incredible there. Lionel Cartwright does an amazing job as the Creative Arts Director and some of the best music in Nashville is found at BCC every weekend. I know that Holly was truly honored to be asked to sing backup. BCC is chock full of top notch musicians and having the opportunity to perform with them is a big deal. Don’t believe me? Well keep this in mind, Lionel has 2 Top 20’s, 3 Top 10’s, and 3 Top 5 hits, one being a number one song, “Leap Of Faith“, to his credit and that’s just scratching the surface. 8)

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