Peanut, Our Fur Baby

Poor Peanut is not doing well. Each morning, the highlight of Peanut's day - we let her sit on the edge of the tub and drink water from the tub before we switch the shower on. A couple days ago, she slipped getting out of the tub and we think that's when she broke her jaw. We had NO idea! A day or so later, we woke up to kitty getting sick. Every now and then, she does get the hairball - but this was not the same. She just didn't look like she felt well. She slept all day long on the sofa, not moving at all. Greg came home from school, and when Peanut got up to greet him, she got sick again. Off to the emergency vet we went. The nice vet at AM/PM Animal Hospital checked her out. That's when we discovered the broken jaw and the missing tooth. They were able to run some bloodwork while we waited, and a thyroid test would go to the lab in the morning. The bloodwork indicated a possible Urinary Tract Infection in addition to some constipation. Poor baby. The vet gave her some antibiotics and a shot to help with the nausau. Peanut couldn't keep the meds down, and got sick on the way home. In the morning, she was sick again - so I packed her up and took her back to the vet. She looked so sad and miserable. I felt horrible. Her vitals the next day indicated that she had lost over half a pound overnight! Since we couldn't get her to eat or drink anything, we knew she had to stay and get an IV. They were able to give her fluids and antibiotics at the same time. The vet also did an enema to get the constipation moving. My poor baby... it was a domino effect. Her jaw hurt, so she wasn't eating or drinking which was causing constipation and a uti - and possibly making her sick to her stomach on top of it all.



I just talked to the vet about 30 minutes ago. They were able to get her to go poo, and she has some liquids in her now - which should make her feel better. The vet said she's more talkative now, which is somewhat of a good sign - she was pretty quiet when we left her there. The problem the vet said is that they tried a couple different types of food - and Peanut looked at them and gagged! They said if they can't get her to eat, she'll have to stay another night. Another possible cause for the nausau could be Pancreatitus !!! But, the normal treatment for that is a steriod, and since P has a heart murmur, that's out.



I'm freaking out. How could this all happen so fast? Please think happy kitty thoughts for us.

Happy Thanksgiving

We're on our way to my cousin Raymond's soon... Details of the day to follow!

Holy moly batman. There were three turkeys, a ham, and at least 2 dozen side dishes -- all that before we got to dessert. Yum. And yes, I did get me some PUMPKIN pie! Homemade too - not the store bought kind. Not that there's anything wrong with the store bought kind (I eat that kind too, no worries!).

I brought over pumpkin cookies - pretty easy to make and quite tasty. I also made Sweet Potato Poppers. They were excellent, but I need to make a few adjustments to the recipe. Essentially, you wrap the mashed sweet potato mixture around a large marshmellow and then roll it in a coconut/cinnamom/sugar mix and bake the little balls in the oven. Sounds good, right. Well... they kind of exploded in the oven. D'oh! Marshmellow was oozing out all over the cookie sheet. Tasted good, just looked a little ugly.

Caleb Kane

At Mahra's wedding, I met her brother Brad aka Caleb Kane. I've heard her talk of him every now and then - so it was cool to meet him and his beautiful wife Sarah. I know he lives in LA, and does some acting, some singing, some other LA type things... At the wedding, an old coworker told me that Caleb was the voice of Aladdin. The actual voice in all the Disney movies! How cool is that? So, on a whim last night, I looked him up on YouTube.

Here's his first music video. You can search for Caleb Kane and see some of his other stuff too if you're interested...

The Farley Family

I feel like a dork. I misspelled their names on the dedication I sent them from the JNF.

Conor, Boothe and the Girls

I know they will look past my spelling errors and see the emotion in the dedication - but I wish I could have spelled their names correctly.

Wishing them peace and comfort this holiday season....

Feeling Like a Turkey?

I admit. I am seriously craving pumpkin pie. I mean seriously. If there was a pie in the house at this very moment, I would eat the whole thing. I love pumpkin pie.
Perhaps it's a good thing then that I REALLY need to get to the grocery store and that there is currently NOT a pumpkin pie in the house. Although... I probably do have all the ingredients to make a pie. But, that would require me making the crust too since I don't happen to have a handy dandy pre-made one in the freezer. Bummer.

Now the real dilemma - we are running ridiculously low on groceries and I have a sinking feeling that the grocery store is the last place I want to be the day before Thanksgiving. If I ever thought it was crowded before... yeowzers.

On to other updates and such. But first, another admission. We went to a fantastic wedding over the weekend and I forgot my camera. I KNOW! We actually got dressed up on Friday and Saturday night - and I don't have a single picture. Oy.

The wedding was for my friend and former boss, Mahra Fox and another friend, Kevin Pailet. I have to say - they truly are a great team. They just fit together. They are nothing less than 100% themselves around each other. The rehearsal dinner was held at the Trammel Crow building in downtown Dallas. It was a little bizarre, because my office is across the street, and we've been to the TC for lunch. But, for dinner, it barely resembled the place at lunchtime! When we arrived, we had a quick chat with Mr. and Mrs. Pailet. They were very welcoming and quite excited about the night's events. Greg and I went upstairs and into the lounge to wait for others to arrive, dinner etc. While we were sitting, we glanced over at another booth, and there was my other old coworker, Amanda! Crazy. We chatted with her and her date for a while, then they left and Greg and I chatted with Mahra and Kevin. Dinner was good, nothing terribly fancy -- and we left before all the speeches, etc. It had been a hectic day rushing to Dallas and we were exhausted.

Saturday morning Greg and I headed over the Grand Spa in Addison to use up a gift certificate that I had won at last year's holiday party. A lovely couple's massage was just what the doctor ordered. We both really needed the break. The rest of the day, Greg spent at Starbucks working on a paper for school, and I ran errands. Gas in the car, state inspection, get my nails done, pick up a card for the wedding present, yada yada. Then, off to get ready for the wedding. Greg looked so nice in his tux! I wore Carla's bridesmaid dress from our wedding. I have to say, it worked out great!

The wedding was held at Shearith Israel and was a beautiful ceremony. Rabbi Gershon read aloud the letters that Mahra and Kevin had each written each other. Then, off to the reception which was held at the Dallas Museum of Art. WOW. It's a stunning backdrop for a wedding. The room we were seated in had a huge window that was surrounded with the big glass Murano flowers (like the ones in the entrance to the Bellagio). Here's couple pictures of the flowers at the Bellagio:

Back to the wedding... it was beautiful. I'm glad we were able to attend. I was happy to see two friends that happy together.

Sunday morning, Greg and I met my parents for brunch. The original plan was to meet at Mattito's at 10 am. We did that. Problem was - the restaurant wasn't opening until 10:30 and we were on a bit of a time crunch because of the afore mentioned "paper". So, we headed down the street to BreadWinner's. Yum. I love brunch. What a great idea! Then, back home.

Greg turns in his paper tomorrow, and then we're looking forward to spending the holiday with my cousin Raymond and his family.

Wishing you a happy holiday too!

Internet Woes

Things had been going so well with the new laptop and working from home.... I knew it had to end. Sigh. So, here I sit at Starbucks because my apartment is possessed by a weird anti-internet demon.

We were having speed issues last night. Then... this morning, splat. I know I'm connected but I can't get to the freaking internet! I'm convinced it has something to do with my upgrade to IE7. I'm going to try later to go back to version 6. I don't know how to go backwards, but I need to figure it out quick like a bunny!

It has been nice to get out of the house. And the peppermint mocha is delightful, but my toes are freezing and I think I've done enough people watching for a day. I'm scared to go home though until the work day is over! Ugh.

Free Rice

Seriously. I'm feeling smarter. And I may be addicted to the vocabulary. I can maintain a level 40 for a while, but I can't seem to get much higher.

Eh. I'm feeling pretty good. Even knowing the basics of a foreign language sure does come in handy though! I saw several words that had their root in the romance language. My basic knowledge of French helped me figure out at least a dozen words today!

Again, here's the site: Free Rice

Football Playoff Pictures

Allright kids... I'm about to try something new. An embedded slideshow. Hold on to your seats. Skip promises to help me if I blow up the blog (poor guy). Nah, I should be able to handle it. I'm reading HTML for Dummies! Really. Here goes...



These pictures are from the playoff games I mentioned in an earlier post. The ones that caused the broken rib scare... He's feeling better though. Still a little sore, but better.

Feeling Wordy?

Ok, I must admit -- I found this link on my cousin's blog. But, it's really freaking cool! Learn some new words and do a good deed all at the same time. Sweet, huh? And in case you need a little help, you can always reference Miriam Webster. :-)

Free Rice

Now go - do something good.

Adventurous Weekend

Well, I guess it wasn't really all THAT adventurous -- but here's the quick rundown:

One of Greg's professors had mentioned an Art showing downtown Austin - so after our ER visit, we headed downtown. Art From The Streets. This is a once a year showing of art work that is done by the homeless of Austin. The artist gets to keep 99% of the proceeds from the sale of their work. There's a $3 donation to enter the shelter -- and ton of work on display. There was watercolor, chalk, paint, mixed-media, oil -- tons of honestly really great work. We had a tough time deciding upon which pieces to bring home. So much trouble, that we actually left on Saturday and had to return on Sunday! Most of the artists were on site to talk about their work and about how the shelter is helping them. It was really great. Professor Cohen mentioned to Greg that the Dean of the law school was planning on decorating his office with art from the show. I'm curious to see which artist they chose!

We ended up with two pieces from a woman named Laura. I may try to get a picture of them pre-framing... and of course again once they're framed.

We also tried a new place for dinner. Cuba Libre. The mojito was excellent. The dinner presentation was excellent. Dessert was excellent. My ribs - were blech. Greg had trout, and he thought his was great. Hmmm. The best part of the meal was that we were the only patrons in the restaurant and the end of the UT football game was on in the bar. Holy moly was that ever an ending to a football game. As Greg says... the Longhorns must be the luckiest team around!

IM Playoffs

The date: Halloween
The place: UT IM Fields

The two don't seem to mix, yet there I sat on Halloween on the sidelines of Greg's playoff games. The semi-finals were at 6 pm. The game was intense. I cheered Greg on as he chased a girl across the field. She was fast. Track star fast was what I said when she was running. Halftime. I overhear from the other "bench" that she indeed WAS a track star at Berkeley! What's she doing playing IM football with a bunch of wanna-be lawyers? Oh... she's one of the wanna-bes. Hmmmm. The other team scores first. The Lawbsters come back and rally - they pull off a last minute victory to send their team to the Finals! Ahhh, sweet victory.

The cheers were cut a bit short though as Greg took a pretty bad fall. He brushed it off with the normal "I'm fiiiiine" comments - but it looked bad to me. The playoffs were against the only other undefeated team. Only fitting I thought. Turn out, the other team had only one player we knew -- our friend Nick. They were good. They had several really fast guys on their team. The Lawbster reign came to an end. Sigh... not too bad. 2nd place out of 16 teams.

That night, Greg said his ribs were really sore. I asked if he thought he'd broken something - but he said nah... just bruised.

So... it's now Saturday and Greg is still wincing when he moves, sleeps, bends over, etc. We ended up heading over to Seton hospital for a few x-rays. Thankfully, it was nice and quiet in the ER - not very Grey's Anatomy or ER like. :-) We saw a nice doctor, they took an x-ray of Greg's chest, but they couldn't see anything broken. Good news. Nothing was broken, cracked or poking into his lungs. So... the only thing they can tell us is that he'll have to suffer through it.

Next post will fill you in on the rest of our weekend adventures (outside of the hospital visit)!

Football!

Greg and I were able to surprise my cousin Andy's 2nd oldest, Hudson, last Tuesday by coming to his last flag football game of the season. Parking was a nightmare, but once we figured out where to go - we walked up right in time to wave hello and watch the start of the game. It was great fun as always to see Andy, Sarah and kids -- and especially good to surprise Hudson. Hudson's team ultimately didn't win the game, but they played really well. Hudson is pretty nimble and made some great plays for the team. He run, he zigs, he zags, he kicks (kickoff)....

Okay - the plan here was to insert this cool photo album slide show thing that I've seen on other blogs, but apparently, I'm not coordinated enough just yet to figure it out. So... here are a few of my favorite pictures from the evening.

The Huddle:

Ready Set

Heather and Hudson chatting post game.

Evan hanging out on the sidelines.

And one very cute Trevor.

Ok... This was just funny. Sarah was giving Heather a helping hand trying to get her to smile. Hee hee...

I'm glad we were there to cheer on Hudson and say howdy to the rest of the family.