little weasel

[alonewiththemoon]

Stupid T--it took me an hour and fifteen minutes to get home from Central Square last night, it usually takes about 30 minutes, sometimes less.  They kept announcing that the southbound trains were halted, but said nothing about the northbound trains.  Eventually however it occurred to me that if the trains weren't moving in one direction, they really weren't likely to be moving in the other direction either and I bailed and took the bus.  Along with a couple hundred other people.  Meh.

I'm pretty worried about Ronan right now.  His spirits are pretty good, he's playful, but he's dropped a lot of weight, coming in at barely 1000g now (good would be 1150 or so), his stool has gone liquid, ergo he is also frequently dehydrated, he's grinding his teeth a lot and he's fighting taking his medicine, which he has always been really good about.  He just looks weak and off, even when he's playing.  I'm guessing this is a helicobacter flareup (i.e. stomach ulcers), but the medicine thing and also the way he fights getting his teeth brushed makes me wonder if he might have mouth ulcers going on as well.  He's always strongly disliked having his teeth brushed but would put up with it with minimal complaining.  Lately though it's become a raging battle, and I think I will stop brushing his teeth until the vet has seen him.  If the problem is just that his IBD is getting worse and not a helicobacter infection, we do have some room to increase his prednisone dosage, though I hope we won't have to do that.  Another option is Imuran, but the side effects can be serious with that, including liver damage (though I think the pred can cause that too).  Complicating things a little bit is the fact that he has some congestion in the aortic valve--it's not that serious at this point, but either of these medications can interfere with the rhythm of the heart.  We have a vet visit scheduled for Tuesday, and I'm relieved that it's with the vet that has a lot of experience with ferrets.

I dreamed the other night that I went to find the ferrets and instead of two there were three--Pan had come back and was getting along really well with Ronan.  It was nice in the dream but on waking I think my brain was trying to make me feel better by telling me that if we lose Ronan, Pan will take care of him.

---

On a completely different note, I recently finished reading Julie Czerneda's Species Imperative trilogy, and I highly recommend it.  It's biological/ecological sci fi, in which a salmon researcher is called upon to help decipher the meaning of the migration patterns of a species of alien that consumes all life in its path.  The various sorts of aliens and their cultures are very well fleshed out, there's suspense galore, a little romance, humor and loads of originality.  Satisfyingly thoughtful science fiction, and it's great to see the science of biology featured more prominently than the science of physics for once.

Comments

[kambriel.livejournal.com]

My best wishes for Ronan! I hope things turn out o.k., but that was incredibly sweet for Pan to show up in the dream... I don't think it's *just* your subconscious, I think Pan is there for him.


On another note ~ I'm being asked to make a rough plan for C14 in Salem in case Boo's Pants win. As you know, we may have moved by then. Do you think we could still pull it off even if it's from a distance?

[alonewiththemoon]

Replying belatedly to your another note, planning a C14 in Salem from a distance: I think that would depend on how well you know the local venues. If you knew exactly where you wanted to hold things, it would be pretty straightforward to make the reservations and so forth. It would get tricky though if you had to look at venues to determine if they would suit your needs or not. Also some venues/restaurants might feel more comfortable dealing with gothic event organizers in person, although Salem may be more used to "odd" events what with the vampire ball, etc. (though those events may have turned venues/restaurants off to that scene, I don't know)

I'd of course be willing to help out however I could, but I don't have a car at my disposal and I don't have free time during the week to go look at places, etc :-/

[kambriel.livejournal.com]

It's o.k., that's sort of the last thing I even want to think about at this point. I might be done with Convergence after this.

[rojagato.livejournal.com]

Stupid T--it took me an hour and fifteen minutes to get home from Central Square last night

I'm hearing different things about what happened over the cube dividers where I'm working onsite this month -- latest was that someone (homeless person? office worker looking for a private place?) started a fire with an errant cigarette under the Longfellow Bridge that halted all the train traffic. What's kind of weird to me, is that I biked home from West End over the bridge about the time this was happening and noticed nothing out-of-the-ordinary except that I was dodging fewer cars and pedestrians at the MGH clusterf***. I guess I didn't get the memo (or the cops hadn't gotten around to blocking off Cambridge Street by the time I came through). I did notice more than the usual amount of people on the sidewalks around bus-stops, but just figured that it was such a nice spring day that people opted to be above-ground.

I'm pretty worried about Ronan right now.

I'm sorry that he's having a crisis. He (and Ronnie, I guess) couldn't have picked a better human for him to have it with, though. I hope that all goes well (at least, with answers) on Tuesday. Please let me know if there's anything that I can do.

I have Black Francine dreams from time to time, still. Often, it's in the context of my trying to find something tangible or intangible from real life. I guess she's sort of my reverse St. Jude as, in the context of the dream, she's making such an elaborate show of hiding something that I find it.

I recently finished reading Julie Czerneda's Species Imperative trilogy, and I highly recommend it.

Well, that's now on my list of things to check out. A belated thanks for lending me The Cowboy and Vampire and Zodiac -- I only finished reading them in the few weeks that I was packing my stuff at Exile because I'd left them out of the packing piles so I could return them to you. They were both really enjoyable because of the equal emphasis on character and plot, and the characters were worth caring about which made the plot more exciting. I really needed some page-turners during those weeks (as opposed to, say, The Plague by Camus, which I also read during that period, which just made me want to throw myself into the Charles à la Dr. Thomas, if only to get away from the book and everything else in this sad, sad world).